Some might view Olympus as the glittering palace of the Gods, but Hera sees it for what it truly is: a prison. After being tricked into a marriage she didn’t want, with a God she didn’t love, Hera is now the Queen of Olympus. In order to protect those she loves, she must find a way to become a shield between others and the volatile fury of her new husband. Zeus is the King of Olympus and he wants Hera to be his in all ways. He is a God that takes great pleasure in exerting his power over others and while he succeeded in securing her hand in marriage, Hera’s love and obedience prove frustratingly elusive. Zeus intends to make every effort to correct this. Hera must learn to navigate the escalating danger as Zeus does his best to drive away her allies and bring her to heel. If Hera is strong enough to truly fight back, she has the chance to change the fate of Olympus forever.
Persephone is a goddess without a title even though her relatives include the Lord of Light, Goddess of Wisdom, and the Queen of the Gods. She’s only known as the daughter of her mother, something that leaves her feeling frustrated. She longs to escape Mount Olympus to discover who she truly is. Hades is the god of the Underworld, and when family obligations force him to attend a festival, he sees Persephone and knows what he’s looking at: a vibrant young goddess aching to break free. So begins an unlikely and tentative friendship that allows Persephone to cultivate her curiosity and blossom as a goddess in her own right. The two escape to the Underworld together, infuriating Persephone’s mother, the goddess Demeter. Crops die and mortals begin to starve as a consequence of Demeter’s wrath, and Persephone has two choices: Take charge of her own life or abandon the person she has become by returning to Olympus. Passions swirl, violence erupts, and the fate of the world is at stake as gods and goddesses let loose in Olympian Confessions.
The adversary professions--law, business, and government, among others--typically claim a moral permission to violate persons in ways that, if not for the professional role, would be morally wrong. Lawyers advance bad ends and deceive, business managers exploit and despoil, public officials enforce unjust laws, and doctors keep confidences that, if disclosed, would prevent harm. Ethics for Adversaries is a philosophical inquiry into arguments that are offered to defend seemingly wrongful actions performed by those who occupy what Montaigne called "necessary offices." Applbaum begins by examining the career of Charles-Henri Sanson, who is appointed executioner of Paris by Louis XVI and serves the punitive needs of the ancien régime for decades. Come the French Revolution, the King's Executioner becomes the king's executioner, and he ministers with professional detachment to each defeated political faction throughout the Terror and its aftermath. By exploring one extraordinary role and the arguments that can be offered in its defense, Applbaum raises unsettling doubts about arguments in defense of less sanguinary professions and their practices. To justify harmful acts, adversaries appeal to arguments about the rules of the game, fair play, consent, the social construction of actions and actors, good outcomes in equilibrium, and the legitimate authority of institutions. Applbaum concludes that these arguments are weaker than supposed and do not morally justify much of the violation that professionals and public officials inflict. Institutions and the roles they create ordinarily cannot mint moral permissions to do what otherwise would be morally prohibited.
In one of his most ambitious physical efforts to date, Dean Karnazes attempted to run 50 marathons, in 50 states, in 50 days to raise awareness of youth obesity and urge Americans of all fitness levels to "take that next step." "UltraMarathon Man: 50 Marathons - 50 States - 50 Days", a Journeyfilm documentary, follows Dean’s incredible step-by-step journey across the country. Ultrarunning legend Dean Karnazes has run 262 miles-the equivalent of ten marathons-without rest. He has run over mountains, across Death Valley, and to the South Pole-and is probably the first person to eat an entire pizza while running. With an insight, candor, and humor rarely seen in sports memoirs (and written without the aid of a ghostwriter or cowriter), Ultramarathon Man has inspired tens of thousands of people-nonrunners and runners alike-to push themselves beyond their comfort zones and be reminded of "what it feels like to be truly alive," says Sam Fussell, author of Muscle. Ultramarathon Man answers the questions Karnazes is continually asked: - Why do you do it? - How do you do it? - Are you insane? And in the new paperback edition, Karnazes answers the two questions he was most asked on his book tour: - What, exactly, do you eat? - How do you train to stay in such good shape?
She's living her very own K-drama. Beside herself with excitement, best-selling author Tessa Hale flies to the vibrant city of Seoul, South Korea, where she's meeting the cast and crew of the film adaptation of her book. The thrill shifts to star-struck panic when she discovers the actor cast as the lead is the idol she's been high-key crushing on for years. The last thing he wants is more real-life drama. Baek Eun Gi is part of one of the biggest K-pop groups in the business. Music has lost its lustre, and he's hoping a shift in focus will bring back that connection he craves. Although he's estranged from his family, he has his friends, a thriving career, and a healthy respect for the dating restrictions imposed upon him. Meet cute, scandal...wedding? When their paths collide in the most unexpected--and embarrassing-- of ways, they try to put it behind them. Too bad there are photos. The music company is irate and offers them a way out of the scandal--a marriage of convenience. Their lives are about to turn upside down, but it just might be the best thing that's ever happened to them.
A devastating inside look at the dark side of Congress as revealed by one of its own! No wonder Congressman X wants to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. His admissions are deeply disturbing. . . "Most of my colleagues are dishonest career politicians who revel in the power and special-interest money that's lavished upon them." "My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything." "Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works." "It's far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification." "Fundraising is so time consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on. Like many of my colleagues, I don't know how the legislation will be implemented, or what it'll cost." "We spend money we don't have and blithely mortgage the future with a wink and a nod. Screw the next generation. It's about getting credit now, lookin' good for the upcoming election."
The Confessions of the Critics shatters a certain silence. Autobiographical criticism has until now skated relatively free from the challenges that usually assail a new literary critical method. It has had this immunity from critique largely because feminists and third-world liberation fighters--such as Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich and Jane Gallop--ushered it to the North American academic stage. Other women and men, including Rigoberta Menchu, Nawal al-Sadawi, Mahasweta Devi and Malcolm X, wrote in the tradition and genre of testimonio . These and other unimpeachably militant backgrounds gave confessional criticism a certain cache among the largely liberal community of literary scholars. We have hesitated to express misgivings about a form that seemed intrinsically tied to the most vital, powerful strivings. Telling stories about one's own past is probably our culture's richest way of characterizing the effects of social injustice and developing what it takes to resist various kinds of victimage, writes contributor Charles Altieri. Confessions of the Critics provides a revealing look into the thoughts and experiences of some of the most influential and important critics of the 20th century. The writers included avoid pretention and gross self-misrepresentation, giving way to raw, sometimes embarrassing, always wholly believable emotion. Describing cumulative literary shocks and episodes of self-recognition, contributors offer insights to their ruling passions and works. Powerful sensations, emotions, recognitions and revelations make up the heart of Confessions of the Critics. It is a book that none will put aside or easily forget. Contributors: Charles Altieri, William Andrews, Michael F. Berube, Timothy Brennan, Gillian Brown, Cathy Davidson, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Diane Freedman, Marjorie Garber, Gerald Graff, Stephen J. Greenblatt, Michael Hill, Marianne Hirsch, Alice Yeager Kaplan, Amitava Kumar, Candace Lang, Louis Menand, Judith Lowder Newton, Linda Orr, Vincent Pecora, David Simpson, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Madelon Sprengnether, Jane Tompkins, Marianna Torgovnick, H. Aram Veeser, Jeffrey Williams, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl.
From its origins in the 1670s through the French Revolution, serious opera in France was associated with the power of the absolute monarchy, and its ties to the crown remain at the heart of our understanding of this opera tradition (especially its foremost genre, the tragédie en musique). In Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France, however, Olivia Bloechl reveals another layer of French opera’s political theater. The make-believe worlds on stage, she shows, involved not just fantasies of sovereign rule but also aspects of government. Plot conflicts over public conduct, morality, security, and law thus appear side-by-side with tableaus hailing glorious majesty. What’s more, opera’s creators dispersed sovereign-like dignity and powers well beyond the genre’s larger-than-life rulers and gods, to its lovers, magicians, and artists. This speaks to the genre’s distinctive combination of a theological political vocabulary with a concern for mundane human capacities, which is explored here for the first time. By looking at the political relations among opera characters and choruses in recurring scenes of mourning, confession, punishment, and pardoning, we can glimpse a collective political experience underlying, and sometimes working against, ancienrégime absolutism. Through this lens, French opera of the period emerges as a deeply conservative, yet also more politically nuanced, genre than previously thought.
CONFESSIONS OF A LATE-NIGHT TALK-SHOW HOST is written by the host of THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW. It is a double whammy of satire, irreverently told in Garry Shandling's inimitable style which deftly weaves together fact and fiction. This is an exclusive up-close-and-personal inspection of what makes Larry Sanders tick: his loves, his addictions, his friends and his enemies. This will be the Hollywood tell-all to end all Hollywood tell-alls; indeed, Larry Sanders might never be able to eat lunch in that town again!
The vast majority of us can only dream of being an Olympic-level athlete - but we have no real idea of what that means. Here, for the first time, in all its shocking, funny and downright bizarre glory, is the truth of the Olympic experience. It is an unimaginable world: the kitting-out ceremony with its 35kg of team clothing per athlete the pre-Olympic holding camp with its practical jokes, resentment and fighting, and freaky physiological regimes the politicians' visits with their flirty spouses the vast range of athletes with their odd body shapes and freakish genetics the release post-competion in the Olympic village with all the excessive drinking, eating, partying and sex (not necessarily in that order) the hysteria of homecoming celebrations and the comedown that follows - how do you adjust to life after the Games? The Secret Olympian talks to scores of Olympic athletes - past and present, from Munich 1960 right through to London 2012, including British, American, Australian, Dutch, French, Croatian, German, Canadian and Italian competitors. They all have a tale to tell - and most of those tales would make your eyes pop more than an Olympic weightlifter's.
