Specimen Days

Specimen Days

Author: Michael Cunningham

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0374706247

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In each section of Michael Cunningham's bold new novel, his first since The Hours, we encounter the same group of characters: a young boy, an older man, and a young woman. "In the Machine" is a ghost story that takes place at the height of the industrial revolution, as human beings confront the alienating realities of the new machine age. "The Children's Crusade," set in the early twenty-first century, plays with the conventions of the noir thriller as it tracks the pursuit of a terrorist band that is detonating bombs, seemingly at random, around the city. The third part, "Like Beauty," evokes a New York 150 years into the future, when the city is all but overwhelmed by refugees from the first inhabited planet to be contacted by the people of Earth. Presiding over each episode of this interrelated whole is the prophetic figure of the poet Walt Whitman, who promised his future readers, "It avails not, neither time or place . . . I am with you, and know how it is." Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in our greatest city and a meditation on the direction and meaning of America's destiny. It is a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.


The Extended Specimen

The Extended Specimen

Author: Michael S. Webster

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2017-07-25

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781498729154

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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Contributors -- Preface -- Chapter 1: The Extended Specimen -- Extending the Traditional Specimen -- Extending the Specimen Concept -- Conclusion: Just What Is the "Extended Specimen?"--Acknowledgments -- Literature Cited -- Chapter 2: Getting under the Skin -- Avian Anatomical and Skeletal Collections -- Comparative Anatomy -- Systematics of Extant Species -- Morphology and Behavior -- Paleontology -- Morphometrics -- Physiology and Functional Anatomy -- Evolution and Development -- Conclusions and Future Directions -- Acknowledgments -- Literature Cited -- Chapter 3: Advanced Methods for Studying Pigments and Coloration Using Avian Specimens -- Spectrophotometry -- Limitations and Considerations for Using Specimens -- Analytical Approaches -- Applications to Ecology and Evolution -- Future Directions -- Digital Photography and Hyperspectral Imaging -- Chromatographic Analyses of Bird Pigments -- Analytical Approaches -- Benefits and Challenges of Using Specimens -- Future Directions -- Nondestructive Analysis with Raman Spectroscopy -- What Is Raman Spectroscopy? -- Comparing Raman Spectroscopy and Spectrophotometry -- An Overview of Raman Spectroscopy and Plumage Pigments -- Applications of Raman Spectroscopy in Museum Collections -- Advances in Studying Structural Coloration -- Mechanisms of Structural Coloration -- Techniques to Describe Structural Coloration -- Applications to Ecology and Evolutionary Biology -- Structural Coloration in Fossil Feathers -- Future Directions -- Advanced Methods for Studying Avian Egg Color -- Egg Coloration: An Overview -- Chemical Analysis -- Structural Analysis -- Spectrophotometry -- Digital Photography -- Case Study -- Future Directions -- Conclusions -- Literature Cited


The Portable Walt Whitman

The Portable Walt Whitman

Author: Walt Whitman

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2003-12-30

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13: 1440650977

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A comprehensive collection of Whitman's most beloved works of poetry, prose, and short stories When Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass in 1855 it was a slim volume of twelve poems and he was a journalist and poet from Long Island, little-known but full of ambition and poetic fire. To give a new voice to the new nation shaken by civil war, he spent his entire life revising and adding to the work, but his initial act of bravado in answering Ralph Waldo Emerson's call for a national poet has made Whitman the quintessential American writer. This rich cross-section of his work includes poems from throughout Whitman's lifetime as published on his deathbed edition of 1891, short stories, his prefaces to the many editions of Leaves of Grass, and a variety of prose selections, including Democratic Vistas, Specimen Days, and Slang in America. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


Flesh and Blood

Flesh and Blood

Author: Michael Cunningham

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2007-04-17

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 1429937556

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This novel follows the Stassos family through four generations, as it is touched by ambition, love, violence, and the transforming effects of time.


Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine

Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine

Author: Ann Hood

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1998-07-15

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780312195557

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This novel begins in 1969, and as Peter, Paul and Mary croon on the radio and poster paints are splashing the latest anti-war slogans. Suzanne, a poet, lives in a Maine beach house awaiting the birth of a love child she will name Sparrow. Claudia, who weds a farmer during college, plans to raise three strong sons. And Elizabeth and Howard marry, organize protest marches, and try to raise their two children with their own earthy, hippie values. By 1985, things have changed. Suzanne, now with a M.B.A., has taken to calling Sparrow "Susan." After personal tragedy, Claudia spirals backward into her sixties world—and into madness. And Elizabeth, fatally ill, watches despairingly as her children yearn for a split-level house and a gleaming station wagon. In this beloved, critically acclaimed first novel, Hood's clear, brave, and penetrating voice captures the spirit of three friends struggling to resolve their lives in a complicated time warp called lost youth.