Harry was your typical small businessman, worked seven days a week, and maintained a one-room office with just a secretary. He had a nice family and a wife, with three kids. The last few years were exciting, and his destiny seemed secure. He owned a beautiful home that was almost paid for, and for the first time in his life, he could afford his dream car. Overall, life was good. Then he got a threatening phone call from a competitor, and the next day his banker phoned him. It was on a Sunday! From that point on, life would never be the same for him, or his family. The excitement and emotional upheaval of a torrid love affair, and the sorrows and tragedies that would follow was beyond imagination. There was only one hope! Nonno, his grandfather knew about the energy tunnel, Harry himself had seen it! This energy beam could be the stepping-stone to immortality, as well as salvation for the human race.
In the 1970s, a young man, eager to experience life like Thoreau and Walden, takes his wife and moves to a rural Idaho log cabin in this memoir. When Bill Gruber left Philadelphia for graduate school in Idaho, he and his wife decided to experience true rural living. His longing for the solitude and natural beauty that Thoreau found on Walden Pond led him to buy an abandoned log cabin and its surrounding forty acres in Alder Creek, a town considered small even by Idaho standards. But farm living was far from the bucolic wonderland he expected: he now had to rise with the sun to finish strenuous chores, cope with the lack of modern conveniences, and shed his urban pretensions to become a real local. Despite the initial hardships, he came to realize that reality was far better than his wistful fantasies. Instead of solitude, he found a warm, welcoming community; instead of rural stolidity, he found intelligence and wisdom; instead of relaxation, he found satisfaction in working the land. What began as a two-year experiment became a seven-year love affair with a town he'll always consider home. Winner of the Bakeless Prize, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Praise for On All Sides Nowhere “While Gruber’s writing is a gift, even better are the simple but profound truths he shares: “We sometimes forget that the most important thing we can do with our lives is to make them models for somebody else to follow.” Gruber’s Idaho is like the Troy first and famously uncovered by 19th-century German archeologist Schliemann: in actuality, there isn’t a whole lot there, but the author makes it seem full and magical, all the same.” —Publishers Weekly “What was intended to be a deep immersion in study for graduate school—in the silence and solitude of a northern Idaho backwoods cabin—becomes a deep immersion instead in a place and its people, sharply etched . . . . Engaging particulars of an essential life, pared to the core.” —Kirkus Reviews
The international bestseller 'Hysterical, harrowing, honest... I really loved this book' Jarvis Cocker 'A brilliant, jangling opus to Rhodes's frantic mind... I cannot write anything more affecting about Rhodes than he can write himself.' Katie Glass, Sunday Times 'Brave and unflinching... Excellent reading... [Rhodes] deserves an ovation for this courageous work.' Helen Davies, Sunday Times 'What [Rhodes] describes in Fire On All Sides, writing with the same passion and energy he has when talking, are less destructive, more life-enhancing avenues to cope with anxiety, depression and trauma that he has found effective... An earlier generation might have referred to Rhodes as a tortured genius and left it at that, but his life defies such casual, catch-all labels.' Daily Telegraph 'Rhodes writes like he plays - with power and intensity... Deeply stirring' Evening Standard For many of us who suffer from depression or anxiety, the simple act of endurance, of having to appear normal, is a daunting, painful and heroic task. Getting out of bed, packing the kids off to school, showing up for work, preparing dinner... These can be astonishing achievements when it sometimes takes a superhuman effort simply to stand upright. How do you keep going? How do you do what you do, day in, day out, conforming to people's idea of you and functioning in the way society expects you to, when all you want to do is disappear and hide? In Fire On All Sides, Rhodes attempts to find how to make the unbearable bearable in the most exposing circumstances imaginable. As he embarks on a gruelling five-month concert tour, performing in front of thousands of people, the tortuous voices in his mind his constant companions, he has no choice but to face these wild, mad ramblings head on. Luckily, there is the music. There is always the music. Bach, Chopin, Beethoven - they are his holy grail, his mechanism for survival. Just. This is an important, urgent book. It's about going through your day feeling like you can't find a way out of the crazy, it's about not setting the happiness bar too high, it's about accepting the messy imperfection that is life. Rhodes explodes the myths surrounding depression, anxiety and stress - the plagues of our society - into a million pieces, then sticks them back together again with his characteristic thought-provoking, laser sharp and humorous style. The really good news? It's going to be OK. Just.
This is the only book dedicated to the Geometry of Polycentric Ovals. It includes problem solving constructions and mathematical formulas. For anyone interested in drawing or recognizing an oval, this book gives all the necessary construction and calculation tools. More than 30 basic construction problems are solved, with references to Geogebra animation videos, plus the solution to the Frame Problem and solutions to the Stadium Problem. A chapter (co-written with Margherita Caputo) is dedicated to totally new hypotheses on the project of Borromini’s oval dome of the church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome. Another one presents the case study of the Colosseum as an example of ovals with eight centres. The book is unique and new in its kind: original contributions add up to about 60% of the whole book, the rest being taken from published literature (and mostly from other work by the same author). The primary audience is: architects, graphic designers, industrial designers, architecture historians, civil engineers; moreover, the systematic way in which the book is organised could make it a companion to a textbook on descriptive geometry or on CAD.
Bringing together Continental literary theory and Anglo-American philosophy, Listening on All Sides reads the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Nathanial Hawthorne, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams to uncover the role literary texts play in the way that language use creates and defines culture and ethics.
Perhaps no other nation is or has ever been as religiously diverse as the United States. For elected officials, school principals, corporate leaders, and many others, this diversity poses unique challenges. Leaders bring their own faiths to public life, and they daily encounter followers of similar and different faiths. Good leadership must draw together people from varied backgrounds in order to achieve something in common. This is no simple task. How should leaders deal with menorahs and crosses, veils and turbans, prayers and holidays? How do they and their followers turn the cacophony of beliefs and practices into a kind of citizenship worthy of the American tradition of religious freedom? How can they honor the religious convictions of all Americans? In With God on All Sides, Douglas A. Hicks provides a roadmap for leaders as they traverse the post-9/11 landscape. Although the devout possess moral and spiritual resources that can enrich civic life, leaders must also be prepared to cope with nearly inevitable conflicts between people of different faiths. Yet wise leaders can find ways to transform the problem of diversity into an opportunity. Drawing on their moral and spiritual resources, Americans of all creeds have the capacity to enhance the quality of our civic debate. Their faith-based practices create occasions for mutual learning. Hicks tells the stories of how diverse Americans have transformed public controversies into cases of cooperation. The key to good leadership, Hicks writes, is to engage one another across lines of difference with a spirit of humility, build communication and trust, and offer an inclusive vision that is true to America's principles. Based on years of research and practical experience, With God on All Sides provides an invaluable and thought-provoking guide to leadership--and citizenship--in our devout and diverse nation.
