Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1857. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
In The Transformation of Great American School Districts, William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth argue that urban education reform can best be understood as a long process of institutional change, rather than as a series of failed projects. They examine the core assumptions that underlay the Progressive Era model of public education apolitical governance, local control, professional hierarchy, and the logic of confidence and show that recent developments in school governance have challenged virtually all of these assumptions.

Drawing on case studies of five urban districts Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles they trace the rise of new ideas and trends that are reshaping the institution of public education: mayoral control, shifting civic coalitions, federal and state involvement, standards-based accountability, and the role of educational outsiders in district administration. Although each city has evolved along a different path, the editors argue that a set of new underlying ideas is being auditioned in the transition to a new institutional model and describe the process by which institutional change occurs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Riddled with typographical errors
I used this book in a graduate-level course on the politics of education. It is a fine collection of readings on changes in public education, with examples from Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, DC and LA. Some of the chapters are well written, others are a drag. There are many other similar books and collections from all these authors. I did not think this book was much better or worse than others.

Except for all the typographic mistakes. Missing spaces between sentences, missing periods between sentences, closing parentheses without matching opening ones. These aren't the things that make or break a book, but that doesn't mean they should be overlooked. But, for lack of any brilliance of content, these typos stand out. ... Read more

Product Description

Susie Bright Presents: Three the Hard Way

Erotic Novellas by William Harrison, Greg Boyd, and Tsaurah Litzky

Pull down the shades and settle in for pleasure with this trio of erotic novellas -- handpicked by Susie Bright -- showcasing storiesthat are hot and masterful.

Susie Bright, hailed by The New York Times as "the avatar of American erotica," is the undisputed grandmaster of the genre. Now she has handpicked three rising stars -- new masters -- whose stories will delight, arouse, and captivate you.

Connected by a central theme -- the idea that one sexual moment can change a person forever -- each story is wildly different from anything you have read before.

In "Shadow of a Man," Emmy Award-winning writer William Harrison takes us to South Africa, where a photographer who thinks he's seen -- and done -- it all begins an intense affair with the daughter of a famous general. "The Motion of the Ocean" is Tsaurah Litzky's undaunted story about a woman's coming-of-age from her adolescence in the 1960s to the over-the-top sexuality of the 1990s. Greg Boyd's "The Widow" is about the consequences that transpire when a husband reads an erotic novel that his wife has been writing in secret. In it, she has fantasized the outrageous sexual experiences of a widow.

Sensual, provocative, funny, and profound, Three the Hard Way is a pleasure trove of great finds discovered by America's most trusted name in erotica. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Three Outstanding Stories With Erotic Themes! Well Written!
I am not a big fan of the short story, unless the author is exceptionally good, but I really enjoyed the three stories/novellas Susie Bright has compiled in "Three The Hard Way." Although all three pieces contain erotic elements, I think it does the material a disservice to classify it as erotica, or to limit these particular stories to the erotic genre, therefore discouraging those who would not select a book based on its erotic content. Given the graphic material which appears in much of today's fiction, especially romance and fantasy novels, I found these novellas to be erotic, sensual, but not over-the-top, and much more focused on characters, their development and plot. The sexual content is not gratuitous, but an integral part of the storylines. In other words, these are excellent, well written and well crafted novellas. Sex takes a back seat here, although it is integral to all three plots. The connecting theme is the idea that one sexual moment, or experience, can change a person forever.

"The Motion of the Ocean" by Tsaurah Litsky is just plain terrific - and perhaps the rawest piece. It is funny, poignant, and a delightful read. However, of the three, it left me the most contemplative. Ms. Litsky writes of a young woman's coming of age, and takes her from her adolescence in the early 1960s, before the Sexual Revolution began, through the 1990s. The reader experiences the growth and changes of a spunky, yet vulnerable, heroine who absolutely captivates, while focusing on how the sexual mores have changed over the past half century. This is a beautifully crafted story with excellent descriptive passages and dialogue.

Greg Boyd's "The Widow" takes an entirely different tone. A husband discovers pages from a secret novel his wife is writing - pages which she mistakenly left on their printer. The novel is about the sexual liberation of a recently widowed woman. The author's style is quite unique and I found this to be the most sensual and intriguing of the three.

"Shadow of a Man," by Emmy Award-winning writer William Harrison, is set in South Africa during the period before Nelson Mandela was released from prison. A worldly and somewhat jaded American photographer is commissioned to do a portrait of a famous general. He becomes deeply involved, over a brief period, with the general's daughter with unexpected consequences. The political undertones here had a tremendous impact on me.

Overall, these are three novellas worthy of a wide readership. I say, "Bravo, Susie for compiling them." Just a note - I use the terms short story and novella interchangeably. The editor makes a point of calling the three pieces "novellas" - I think they are too short and therefore fit into the "short story" category.
JANA

Wonderful
Thoroughly enjoyed. I'm looking for more by each of these authors. The fiction is gripping, fun. The stories are very different from each other. But each is kind of amazing. Can't wait for the next one.

High Quality Stuff
Wow! This is quality stuff for a connoisseor of literature and porn.These stories stir your thoughts with their meanings, and stir your libido with the beautiful erotica involved.I've read so much smut(yes, I admit) that this was the first book in a long time to linger in my mind.Way to go Susie - you always sort out the good ones. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

A great collection by one of my favorite writers
When this arrived from Amazon, it managed to displace everything else in my reading queue. It felt like Christmas in March: 500 pages of essays and reviews by William Boyd, one of my favorite authors, ever since I stumbled across "An Ice-Cream War", way back when.

As the book contains close to 100 different essays, listing them by name isn't really practical. But to give an idea, sorted into categories, the frequencies are roughly as follows (counts are approximate):

LIFE (autobiographical pieces, mainly about his African childhood,schooldays in Scotland, and time at Oxford; 10 essays)
LITERATURE (book reviews, for the most part, with essays on the short story, keeping a diary, war in fiction, and an introduction to Dickens and Evelyn Waugh; 30 essays)
ART (15 essays on artists as diverse as George Grosz, Pierre Bonnard, Edward Hopper, and Graham Sutherland)
AFRICA (7 pieces, including 3 on Nigerian writer Ken saro-Wiwa, a personal friend of Boyd)
FILM AND TELEVISION (16 pieces, covering Boyd's experience in adapting works for television and film, and as a screenwriter)
PEOPLE AND PLACES (17 pieces, including essays on Charlie Chaplin, Charles Lindbergh, Ian Fleming, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, among other subjects)

Boyd is, I think, a more charitable critic than, say, Anthony Lane or Martin Amis, so there are fewer verbal pyrotechnics. But the book has considerable appeal - he writes fluidly, and with considerable insight on a huge variety of subjects.There are so many wonderful pieces in the collection that it's impossible to do it justice in a review, so I'll just mention three which I enjoyed particularly:

1. Boyd's essay on the short story, in which he provides a useful taxonomy of the form: the event-plot story (everything before Chekhov), the Chekhovian, the "modernist", the cryptic/ludic, the mini-novel, the biographical, and the poetic/mythic.

2. The essay "War in Fiction" in which he pinpoints the central flaw in almost all fictionalized treatment of war with remarkable astuteness:

"Any one man's experience of war or battle .... has to be an exclusively subjective, quirky and highly personal affair...... And yet one's reading of any account suggests that the experience is instead fundamentally a common one; a moderately varied but essentially repetitive parade of stock attitudes and conclusions. Furthermore, the basic judgement of nearly all war novels runs along these sort of lines: 'war is hell/shocking/depraved/inhuman but it provides intense and compensatory moments of comradeship/joy/vivacity/emotion or excitement.'
What appears most damaging is not so much the fatuity of the idea but that this formula represents an orthodoxy in the fictional treatment of war that - with few exceptions - is only paralleled in the pulpier forms of modern romance writing."

3. His thoughts on being translated. An excerpt:

"My Norwegian translator, for example, actually concluded one of his letters to me thus: 'Hey listen, man, if you're ever in Oslo and short of bread you can crash in my pad anytime'. aFter I stopped laughing I started frowning. ... I conjured up images of a superannuated hippie sitting cross-legged on a mattress in an Oslo squat blithely grabbing at the wrong end of every textual stick in my novel."

His bemusement that his three novels "A Good Man in Africa", "An Ice-Cream War", and "Stars and Bars" had titles translated respectively as "Gewoon een Beste Kerel", "Gewoon een Oorlogie", and "Sterren, Strepen en een Gewoon Englesman": 'What was this "Gewoon" business, for heaven's sake?'

Boyd is incredibly erudite, but never condescending, is a shrewd but generous critic, and has led a varied and interesting life. All of which combine to make this a terrific collection.

I highly recommend "Bamboo".

A Writer, Essayist, and Critic of the Highest Order
Ever since I stumbled across Boyd's novel The Blue Afternoon, he has been among my favorite writers. The mark of this is that I haven't actually read all of his books, but tend to "save" them as yearly treats for myself. I was delighted to see that this collection of his nonfiction work was finally available in the U.S., some two years after its British publication. However, I'm doubtful that it will find much of an audience, as American readers are unlikely to rush out to buy a 500+ page collection of essays and reviews mostly written for a British audience. That's a shame, because the book not only confirms Boyd's mastery of prose, but reveals him to be a thoughtful essayist of the highest order and an incredibly insightful critic. It should be noted that this book is not comprehensive, by Boyd's own estimation it only collects roughly 30% of his nonfiction output from the last 25 years. This is divided into six areas, of which, different readers will have their own favorites: 85 pages on his own life, 130 on literature, about 90 on art (primarily modern painters), 35 on Africa, 70 on film and television, and another 85 on "people and places."

I generally don't care for memoir or biography, but the essays on his childhood in Africa and subsequent years at Scottish boarding were completely compelling. Also notable in the opening section are pieces on World War I and an 11-year legal battle to get the royalties due him from an underhanded French publisher. I dipped in and out of the literature section and quite enjoyed pretty much every piece I read. Especially notable are: a piece on Raymond Carver in which he discusses the problem of a writer becoming wedded to a style, his introduction to a new edition of Frederic Manning's Her Privates We, his introduction to a new edition of Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, in which he does not hesitate to point out the novel's flaws and failures, an essay on journal-keeping, a taxonomy of short stories, a scathing review of the posthumous Hemmingway "novel" True At First Light, and a piece about the general deficiency of war in fiction.

I barely touched the art section, since the majority of it concerned modern painters (Boyd is an amateur painter himself), of which I knew nothing, and without supporting material such as color reproductions, would have little to connect with. However, there is a short gem in there about his creation of a fictional painter named Nat Tate at the request of the editor of Modern Painters. Also quite good is an essay titled "Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Photograph," which is his introduction to a book called Anonymous: Enigmatic Images from Unknown Photographers. Africa is the next section, and I wish it had been bigger -- although to be fair, Africa figures a good deal in the first section of the book. About half the section is devoted to Boyd's friend, the Nigerian writer, publisher, and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian military after a sham show trial in 1995. After reading this section, I immediately added his novel Sozaboy to my wishlist.

A great deal of the pieces in the "Film and Television" concern Boyd's own experiences as a screenwriter. Again, most of his work, while critically well-received, has never done much business in America. Some of it, I wasn't even aware of, and am grateful to be able to add The Trench and Sword of Honor to my Netflix queue (now if only someone would release Armadillo on DVD...). His best writing in this section concerns the process of filmaking, and he is especially cogent on the process of adaptation. The final section is a mish-mash of topics, ranging from particularly Londoncentric ones (minicabs, caffs, Newham), to profiles (Ian Fleming, Charlie Chaplin, The Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, the Duke & Duchess of Windsor), to places such as Montevideo. Most intriguing of all is an essay about the long-forgotten Galapagos Affair, which immediately had me seeking out further reading on the topic.

Overall, this is a fantastic collection with enough variety to meet all moods and for every reader to find something they can connect with. While it is helpful to be familiar with Boyd's fiction, since many of the essays touch upon aspects of its creation, it is not essential (although you're missing a treat if you haven't tried him). The only quibble I would have is that while each piece has the original publication date appended, I would have liked to know what publication each appeared in. It would have also been nice to have a complete bibliography of all his nonfiction as an appendix, so that those who wish to do so, could track down the 70% not represented here. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very poor history
This book, originally printed in 1921, shows its age in its biases.Ancient Greece was the most prominent influence on Western culture?I guess the Torah/Bible, which originated in the Middle East, isn't somethingsecular scholars know of or concern themselves with;many would refer to itas the basis for "Western" thought.They also rely onlong-refuted racial categories, talking about how "Aryan"invaders molded Greece into something important.The book obviously hasnot been updated enough through the years in order to keep up with science. It also makes little attempt to study modern education, as current issueslike vouchers and charters get overlooked.Not recommended in the least -there has to be a better discussion of the topic out there. ... Read more

Product Description
Writers on Howard Hodgkin gathers together for the first time the responses of major contemporary writers to the work of Howard Hodgkin. Through the variety of voices it features and the range of literary approaches they employ, this collection provides remarkable new insights into Hodgkin’s work, as well as examples of some of the most incisive writing on art published in recent years.

Illustrated in full color, this is a unique combination of the visual and the written word and a fitting tribute to a remarkable artist. ... Read more

Product Description
Dr William Stukeley (1687-1765) was the most renowned English antiquary of the eighteenth century. This study discusses his life and achievements, placing him firmly within his intellectual milieu, which he shared with his illustrious friend Isaac Newton and with other natural philosophers, theologians and historians. Stukeley's greatest memorial was his work on the stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury: at a time when most historians believed they were Roman or medieval monuments, he proved that they were of much greater antiquity, and his influence on subsequent interpretations of these monuments and their builders was enormous. For Stukeley, these stone circles - the work of 'Celtic Druids', were a link in the chain that connected the pristine religion of Adam and Noah with the modern Anglican Church. Historians today belittle such speculations, but Stukeley shared his vision of lost religious and scientific knowledge with many of the great minds of his day; this account shows how throughout his distinguished career his antiquarian researches fortified his response to Enlightenment irreligion and the threat he believed it posed to science and society. ... Read more

Product Description
This early work on The Queen cook Book is both expensive and hard to find in it's first edition, this is a fascinating read and is thoroughtly recommended for inclusion on any cooks book shelf. This comprehensive book contains many receipes which are still useful and practical today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description

At a time when Canada's influence in hockey seems to be slipping, Hockey Towns assures us that the spirit of the game will endure in our communities.

William Boyd takes us on a journey across Canada -- from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia to Powell River, British Columbia -- for a look at hockey outside the big cities. Visiting places like Truro, Nova Scotia (where there's a run for the Allan Cup, senior hockey's top prize), Bienfait, Saskatchewan, and Stonewall, Manitoba, Boyd finds the people who care about the game and work to keep it alive. He sits in on junior-league coaching sessions, heated playoff games between rival teams, and the coffee-shop conversations that relive the good old days. Hockey Towns paints a vivid picture of where hockey came from and where it is today, from the enthusiastic kids who practice early Saturday mornings to the former NHL players who keep the spirit alive in their late-night oldtimers' games. What emerges is a heartwarming portrait of our national pastime on a small-town level, where its roots have always been.

Customer Reviews (1)

Boyd allows us to take a walk back in time; hockey time.
Bill Boyd does a very fine job cataloging some of the past as he takes us back in time.He allows the reader to sit in the comfort and security of their home and redefine their life of years past.

As he poignantly andapologetically establishes early on in the book, he cannot possibly coverall 'Hockey Towns' in Canada.

I have had an itch for many years; that ishave the opportunity to find out about places that were rich in hockeyhistory that I only knew by name.As a youngster growing up in Timmins,Ontario I only heard of so many of these towns and I was continually'teased' with little bits of information.

Boyd has removed this itch, herubbed and scratched it to absolute satisfaction. I have had the voidfilled.

I like his style.There are no facades, no pretentions, hepresents the information in such a way that it really is easy reading.Thereader is not overwhelmed with esoteria or rhetoric; I like that.He isnot setting himself up as an expert, nor does he present himself as anarrogant writerout to blow his own horn!

His disposition as he presentseach town is really another strength.

I took the time to write him toexpress my thanks for allowing me to read about towns I knew only by name. He was grateful for my efforts.

A word of caution.If your home town isnot included, be gentle in trying to understand that not all hockey townscould be covered in one book. ... Read more

Product Description
1914. The Man; Drama of his Life (Life Lost); Inexorableness of Righteousness ("Inferno"); Educative Discipline ("Purgatorio"); Victory of Love ("Paradiso"); Drama of the Soul (Life Lost and Found). ... Read more