High Art

Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.

When a nameless, struggling actor in 1970s New York gets the call that an enigmatic director wants him for an art film set in the Amazon, he doesn't hesitate: He flies to South America, no questions asked. He quickly realizes he's made a mistake. He's replacing another actor who quit after seeing the script - a script the director now claims doesn't exist. The movie is over budget. The production team seems headed for a breakdown. The air is so wet that the celluloid film disintegrates.

Written in Tyrrell's trademark satirical style, How Do We Get Out of Here? is an invaluable and intimate recount of the political and cultural battles that shaped our contemporary politics.

The art world is one of the most secretive of global businesses, and the list of its crimes runs long and deep. Today, with prices in the hundreds of millions for individual artworks, and billionaires' collections among the most conspicuous and liquid of their assets, crime is more rampant than ever in this largely unregulated universe. Increased prices and globalization have introduced new levels of fraud and malfeasance into the art world—everything from "artnapping," in which an artwork is held hostage and only returned for a ransom, to forgery and tax fraud.

Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty - a poet, a New Yorker, and an American - keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work.

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafes and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of 21 to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon.

Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America's first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Don Paterson is one of our most acclaimed contemporary poets, possessed of "an infinite sensitivity to the world" (Zadie Smith). But his current standing gives few hints of his hilariously misspent youth. An indifferent student prone to obsessions (with girls at school and . . . origami), Paterson nevertheless made clear early on his immense gift for observation. In Toy Fights, he vividly re-creates the customs of the Scottish working class, from the titular childhood game ("basically twenty minutes of extreme violence without pretext") to the virtues of the sugary sweet known as tablet.

There's no wrong way to be a woman. There are countless wrong ways to be a man. James Breakwell should know. He's tried just about all of them. Journalism. Pig ownership. Felony lawn gnome theft. Whatever masculinity is supposed to be, this can't be it. But can you really fail at something no one can quite define? Apparently. Now, in a series of funny, sharply observed, and occasionally poignant essays, everyone's favorite internet-famous father of four daughters lays down a lifetime of lessons in what it means to be a man.

In August of 1966, Jim Grimsley entered the sixth grade in the same public school he had attended for the five previous years, in his small eastern North Carolina hometown. But he knew that the first day of this school year was going to be different: For the first time he'd be in a classroom with Black children. That was the year federally mandated integration of the schools went into effect, at first allowing students to change schools through "freedom of choice", replaced two years later by forced integration.

Nobody needs advice, but everybody wants it. Conversely, everybody wants to give advice but we need to. It's in our blood...because we're stoned. That's the point. And what better way to legitimize two stoned people's need to babble advice than with a book? Allow us to introduce ourselves: We're Tracie and Rich. We go way back. We host an Internet video series in which we answer viewer-submitted questions, solving their problems with the help of an herbal remedy. Basically we get stoned and tell people how to live their lives. At this point, we want to get higher, and take things to the next level....

The art of catching the exercise high. I went on a long journey to find health and fitness after a major accident and incredible recovery...You can benefit from my long journey and learn how to feel good while exercising! Now discover how life threw me a curveball...I was in college enjoying my summer vacation when I decided to be the life of the party and jump off a pier into shallow water. Unfortunately, I ended up fracturing my fifth and sixth vertebrae in my neck. I remember at the time I didn't really believe in God. At that very moment I cried out to God! Help me...

Beau and Edgar have been best friends from birth, but couldn't have had a more different start in life. Having finished school for good they make plans for the summer of a lifetime but a tragic accident cuts their dreams short and lands them in Heaven facing a stark choice. Do they want to stay in Heaven and train as spirit guides or reincarnate into a new life? For Edgar the choice is clear: having had a miserable existence once before he is in no hurry to try again, for Beau the magic of Heaven is no match for real life.

The GED Test Prep & Study Guide is an exhaustive and expertly curated resource aimed at empowering individuals seeking to obtain their General Educational Development (GED) certificate. This all-encompassing guide covers the full spectrum of subjects tested on the GED, structured in an accessible and systematic format.

Something is wrong in Ridgemont. Evelyn MacIntire senses it. June 2017 will bring an end to more than the school year. Parents and teachers have told her and her friends they have their whole lives ahead of them. After high school they can be anything they want to be. They've been told that they are special and unique. Turns out their "whole lives" might not last past the end of the school year. Reality is shifting.

When Saba Khan’s apartment burns in a mysterious fire, possibly a hate crime, her Chicago high school rallies around her. Her family moves rent-free into a luxury apartment, Saba’s Facebook page explodes, and she starts (secretly) dating a popular boy. Then a quirky piece of art donated to a school fund-raising effort for the Khans is revealed to be an unknown work by a famous artist, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Saba’s life turns upside down again.

The theater is in the midst of a digital revolution! This audiobook provides listeners with an easy-to-understand overview of the digital technology currently available for the stage. In clear language, Digital Technical Theater Simplified explains digital technology in the fields of lighting, audio, video, and show control. All chapters contain do-it-yourself examples of how anyone can use these advanced technologies, as well as case studies of "how the pros do it".

When Anna Broinowski learned that fracking had invaded downtown Sydney, she had a brilliant idea: she would seek guidance for a kryptonite-powerful, anti-fracking movie from the world's greatest propaganda factory - apart from Hollywood. After two years of trying, she was allowed to make her case in Pyongyang and was granted full permission to film. She worked closely with the leading lights of North Korean cinema, even playing an American in a military thriller.

In this comprehensive yet easy-to-read book, Michael Fox-Rabinovitz, Managing Partner of Chartwell Capital LLC, and a successful investor with over 25 years of experience, decodes the secrets, nuances, and benefits of collectible assets. He also provides a road map on how best to leverage fractional ownership to include collectible investments in your long-term financial plan.

Discover how the angels proclaimed Jesus’ birth to the frightened shepherds who were watching their sheep. “Angels we have heard on high sweetly singing o’er the plains, and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!” The scripture verse from Luke 2:13-15 is presented in the book as well.