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Author: National Portrait Gallery (Great Britain)
Publisher:
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781855144552
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Eight internationally acclaimed authors have invented imaginary biographies and character sketches based on fourteen unidentified portraits... in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery."--Back cover.
Author: James Trefil
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
Published: 2019-09-17
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 1588346730
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The captivating possibilities of extraterrestrial life on exoplanets, based on current scientific knowledge of existing worlds and forms of life It is now known that we live in a galaxy with more planets than stars. The Milky Way alone encompasses 30 trillion potential home planets. Scientists Trefil and Summers bring readers on a marvelous experimental voyage through the possibilities of life--unlike anything we have experienced so far--that could exist on planets outside our own solar system. Life could be out there in many forms: on frozen worlds, living in liquid oceans beneath ice and communicating (and even battling) with bubbles; on super-dense planets, where they would have evolved body types capable of dealing with extreme gravity; on tidally locked planets with one side turned eternally toward a star; and even on "rogue worlds," which have no star at all. Yet this is no fictional flight of fancy: the authors take what we know about exoplanets and life on our own world and use that data to hypothesize about how, where, and which sorts of life might develop. Imagined Life is a must-have for anyone wanting to learn how the realities of our universe may turn out to be far stranger than fiction.
Author: Sabrina Reed
Publisher: Univ. of Manitoba Press
Published: 2022-11-04
Total Pages: 197
ISBN-13: 1772840122
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Perceptive, controversial, topical, and achingly funny, Miriam Toews’s books have earned her a place at the forefront of Canadian literature. In this first monograph on Toews’s work, Sabrina Reed examines the interplay of trauma and resilience in the author’s fiction. Reed skillfully demonstrates how Toews situates resilience across key themes, including: the home as both a source of trauma and an inspiration for resilient action; the road trip as a search for resolution and redemption; and the reframing of the Mennonite diaspora as an escape from patriarchal oppression. The deaths by suicide of Toews’s father and sister stand out as the most shocking and tragic of the author’s biographical details, and Reed explores Toews’s use of autofiction as a reparative gesture in the face of this trauma. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to both scholars and devotees of Toews’s work, Lives Lived, Lives Imagined is a timely examination of Toews’s oeuvre and a celebration of fiction’s ability to simultaneously embody compassion and anger, joy and sadness, and to brave the personal and communal oppressions of politics, religion, family, society, and mental illness.
Author: William H. Epstein
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2016-06-06
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13: 1438460791
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →How Hollywood biopics both showcase and modify various notions of what it means to be an American. Biopicsfilms that chronicle the lives of famous and notorious figures from our national historyhave long been one of Hollywoods most popular and important genres, offering viewers various understandings of American national identity. Invented Lives, Imagined Communities provides the first full-length examination of US biopics, focusing on key releases in American cinema while treating recent developments in three fields: cinema studies, particularly the history of Hollywood; national identity studies dealing with the American experience; and scholarship devoted to modernity and postmodernity. Films discussed include Houdini, Patton, The Great White Hope, Bound for Glory, Ed Wood, Basquiat, Pollock, Sylvia, Kinsey, Fur, Milk, J. Edgar, and Lincoln, and the book pays special attention to the crucial generic plot along which biopics traverse and showcase American lives, even as they modify the various notions of the national character. A provocative, critically astute study, this collection examines the biopic as a reflexive, refractive modernist film genre. Admirably researched essays provide close, compelling readings of chosen films, while exploring the multilayered matrices of historical fact, biographical and autobiographical literature, popular media representations, and cultural historiesshaping not only the lives and narratives of the performers, artists, and political/historical figures represented but also the practices of the filmmakers as they worked within or on the margins of the Hollywood industry. Cynthia Lucia, Rider University The volumes greatest strengths include its range, its variety of ideas on the significance of the biopic, and its researchdefinitive in several casesinto the relation between historical figures and their cinematic counterparts. James Morrison, author of Passport to Hollywood: Hollywood Films, European Directors
Author: Linda Covill
Publisher:
Published: 2010-08-10
Total Pages: 354
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Buddhist biographies have different kinds of textual history and are conveyed through various media. They are composed by named poets or written down by anonymous redactors and compilers; they are told by bards and even enacted by performers. They are also written by historical persons as autobiographies, both "public" and "secret." They are addressed to different kinds of readerships and have diverse purposes, including forming a model for emulation, an explanation of the foundation of a particular community, or a narrative explication of doctrine. This book presents a multifaceted, multitradition portrait of Buddhist biographies. Part one deals with biographies of the Buddha, investigating Chinese sources and featuring poetic versions by Ashvaghosha. Part two contains modern Buddhist life stories, including a rare autobiography from Burma. Part three explores the Tibetan tradition. Together, these biographies give students and seekers a thoughtful overview of how diverse Buddhist teachers understand and explain the highest purpose of life.
Author: John Burke
Publisher: Baker Books
Published: 2015-10-13
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 1493400517
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →It's obvious from the bookshelves and the big screen that heaven is on everyone's mind. All of us long to know what life after death will be like. Bestselling author John Burke is no exception. For decades, he has been studying accounts of people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs). While not every detail of individual NDEs correlate with Scripture, Burke shows how the common experiences shared by thousands of survivors clearly point to the God of the Bible and the exhilarating picture of heaven he promises. Imagine Heaven is an inspirational journey through the Bible's picture of heaven, colored in with the real-life stories of heaven's wonders. Burke compares gripping stories of NDEs to what Scripture says about our biggest questions of heaven: Will I be myself? Will I see friends and loved ones? What will it look like? What is God like? What will we do forever? What about children and pets? This book will propel readers into an experience that will forever change their view of the life to come and the way they live life today. It also tackles the tough questions of heavenly reward and hellish NDEs. Anyone interested in NDEs or longing to imagine heaven more clearly will enjoy this fascinating and hope-filled book.
Author: B. Garrick Harden
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2019-06-07
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 1498581005
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Imagined Borders/Lived Ambiguity: Intersections of Repression and Resistance examines the theoretical versatility of the concept of “borders.” The impulse to categorize, while present from antiquity in Western culture, has increased in intensity since the advent of the modern age with its corresponding political rise in the ideology of the sovereign nation-state. While immigration is the common mental image Westerners have when discussing borders, immigration is only the tip of the iceberg for this book. The belief in mutually exclusive, clear, and concrete categories creates large swathes of exceptions where people live ambiguous lives nationally, racially, sexually, ethnically, and in terms of gender.Identity is discussed in the book through the lens of borders and ambiguity. The fervor over categorization, best embodied in recent political history by the Trump administration in the United States, is both a desire to identify and control “dangerous” populations, but also creates the very ambiguity categorization is intended to alleviate. The volume weaves together discussions on the subjective meaning-making in ambiguity, policies that create ambiguity, historical creations of ambiguity that persist to the present, and theoretical considerations on the relationship between borders and ambiguity.
Author: Cynthia Anne Huff
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780415372206
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Recognising the great legacy of women's life writings, this book draws on a wealth of sources to critically examine the impact of these writings on our communities.
Author: Damien Stankiewicz
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2017-01-01
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 1442628790
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Damien Stankiewicz's ground-breaking ethnographic study of the various contexts of media production work at ARTE (the newsroom, the editing studio, the screening room), reveals how ideas about French, German, and European culture coalesce and circulate at the channel.
Author: Mark Brake
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 0521491290
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Compelling account of how ideas of alien life have evolved for general readers, amateur astronomers and undergraduate students studying astrobiology.
