An Emergency in Slow Motion

An Emergency in Slow Motion PDF

Author: William Todd Schultz

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 160819681X

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Diane Arbus was one of the most brilliant and revered photographers in the history of American art. Her portraits, in stark black and white, seemed to reveal the psychological truths of their subjects. But after she committed suicide at the age of 48, the presumed chaos and darkness of her own inner life became, for many viewers, inextricable from her work. In the spirit of Janet Malcolm's classic examination of Sylvia Plath, The Silent Woman, William Todd Schultz's An Emergency in Slow Motion reveals the creative and personal struggles of Diane Arbus. Schultz, an expert in personality psychology, veers from traditional biography to look at Arbus's life through the prism of five central mysteries: her childhood, her outcast affinity, her sexuality, her time in therapy, and her suicide. He seeks not to give Arbus some definitive diagnosis, but to ponder some of the private motives behind her public works and acts. In this approach, Schultz not only goes deeper into her life than any previous writing, but provides a template to think about the creative life in general. Schultz's careful analysis is informed, in part, by the recent release of Arbus's writing by her estate, as well as interviews with Arbus's last therapist. An Emergency in Slow Motion combines new revelations and breathtaking insights into a must-read psychobiography about a monumental artist -- the first new look at Arbus in 25 years.

Traveling with Sugar

Traveling with Sugar PDF

Author: Amy Moran-Thomas

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0520969855

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Traveling with Sugar reframes the rising diabetes epidemic as part of a five-hundred-year-old global history of sweetness and power. Amid eerie injuries, changing bodies, amputated limbs, and untimely deaths, many people across the Caribbean and Central America simply call the affliction “sugar”—or, as some say in Belize, “traveling with sugar.” A decade in the making, this book unfolds as a series of crónicas—a word meaning both slow-moving story and slow-moving disease. It profiles the careful work of those “still fighting it” as they grapple with unequal material infrastructures and unsettling dilemmas. Facing a new incarnation of blood sugar, these individuals speak back to science and policy misrecognitions that have prematurely cast their lost limbs and deaths as normal. Their families’ arts of maintenance and repair illuminate ongoing struggles to survive and remake larger systems of food, land, technology, and medicine.

Torment Saint

Torment Saint PDF

Author: William Todd Schultz

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-10-10

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 1408840006

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Elliott Smith was one of the most gifted songwriters of the nineties, adored by worshipful fans for his subtly melancholic words and melodies. The sadness had its sources in the life. There was trauma from an early age, years of drug abuse and a chronic sense of disconnection that sometimes seemed almost self-engineered. Smith died violently in Los Angeles in 2003, under what some believe to be questionable circumstances, of a single fatal stab wound to the chest. By this time fame had found him, and record buyers who shared the listening experience felt he spoke directly to them from beyond: lonely, lovelorn, frustrated, fighting until he could fight no more. And yet, although his achingly intimate lyrics carried the weight of truth, Smith remained unknowable. In Torment Saint, William Todd Schultz gives us the first proper biography of the rock star, a decade after his death, imbued with affection, authority, sensitivity and long-awaited clarity. Torment Saint draws on Schultz's careful, deeply knowledgeable readings and insights, as well as on more than 150 hours of interviews with close friends, lovers, bandmates, peers, managers, label owners, and recording engineers and producers. This book unravels the remaining mysteries of Smith's life and his shocking, too-early end. It will be an indispensable examination of his life and legacy, both for Smith's legions of fans as well as readers still discovering his songbook.

Handbook of Psychobiography

Handbook of Psychobiography PDF

Author: William Todd Schultz

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 2005-07-07

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0195168275

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Brings together the world's leading psychobiographers, writing on many of the major figures of our age - from Osama Bin Laden to Elvis Presley. This book addresses the subject of how to construct a psychobiography. It provides useful definitions of good and bad psychobiography, and discusses an optimal structure for psychobiographical essays.

Tiny Terror

Tiny Terror PDF

Author: William Todd Schultz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-04-29

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780199831937

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Truman Capote was one of the most gifted and flamboyant writers of his generation, renowned for such books as Other Voices, Other Rooms, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and his masterpiece, the nonfiction novel In Cold Blood. What has received comparatively little attention, however, is Capote's last, unfinished book, Answered Prayers, a merciless skewering of cafe society and the high-class women Capote called his "swans." When excerpts appeared he was immediately blacklisted, ruined socially, labeled a pariah. Capote recoiled--disgraced, depressed, and all but friendless. In Tiny Terror, a new volume in Oxford's Inner Lives series, William Todd Schultz sheds light on the life and works of Capote and answers the perplexing mystery--why did Capote write a book that would destroy him? Drawing on an arsenal of psychological techniques, Schultz illuminates Capote's early years in the South--a time that Capote himself described as a "snake's nest of No's"--no parents to speak of, no friends but books, no hope, no future. Out of this dark childhood emerged Capote's prominent dual life-scripts: neurotic Capote, anxious, vulnerable, hypersensitive, expecting to be hurt; and Capote the disagreeable destroyer, emotionally bulletproof, nasty, and bent on revenge. Schultz shows how Capote would strike out when he felt hurt or taken for granted, engaging in caustic feuds with Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and many other writers. And Schultz reveals how this tendency fed into Answered Prayers, an exceedingly corrosive and thinly disguised roman a clef that trashed his high-society friends. What emerges by the end of this book is a cogent, immensely insightful portrait of an artist on the edge, brilliantly but self-destructively biting the jet-set hands that fed him. Anyone interested in the inner life of one of America's most fascinating literary personalities will find this book a revelation.

Thinking in an Emergency (Norton Global Ethics Series)

Thinking in an Emergency (Norton Global Ethics Series) PDF

Author: Elaine Scarry

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2012-04-09

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0393081044

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Award-winning critic Elaine Scarry provides a vital new assessment of leadership during crisis that ensures the protection of democratic values. In Thinking in an Emergency, Elaine Scarry lays bare the realities of “emergency” politics and emphasizes what she sees as the ultimate ethical concern: “equality of survival.” She reveals how regular citizens can reclaim the power to protect one another and our democratic principles. Government leaders sometimes argue that the need for swift national action means there is no time for the population to think, deliberate, or debate. But Scarry shows that clear thinking and rapid action are not in opposition. Examining regions as diverse as Japan, Switzerland, Ethiopia, and Canada, Scarry identifies forms of emergency assistance that represent “thinking” at its most rigorous and remarkable. She draws on the work of philosophers, scientists, and artists to remind us of our ability to assist one another, whether we are called upon to perform acts of rescue as individuals, as members of a neighborhood, or as citizens of a country.

Poland's Constitutional Breakdown

Poland's Constitutional Breakdown PDF

Author: Wojciech Sadurski

Publisher: Oxford Comparative Constitutio

Published: 2019-05-16

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0198840500

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Since 2015, Poland's populist Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been dismantling the major checks and balances of the Polish state and subordinating the courts, the civil service, and the media to the will of the executive. Political rights have been radically restricted, and the Party has captured the entire state apparatus. The speed and depth of these antidemocratic movements took many observers by surprise: until now, Poland was widely regarded as an example of a successful transitional democracy. Poland's anti-constitutional breakdown poses three questions that this book sets out to answer: What, exactly, has happened since 2015? Why did it happen? And what are the prospects for a return to liberal democracy? These answers are formulated against a backdrop of current worldwide trends towards populism, authoritarianism, and what is sometimes called 'illiberal democracy'. As this book argues, the Polish variant of 'illiberal democracy' is an oxymoron. By undermining the separation of powers, the PiS concentrates all power in its own hands, rendering any democratic accountability illusory. There is, however, no inevitability in these anti-democratic trends: this book considers a number of possible remedies and sources of hope, including intervention by the European Union.

Native Advertising

Native Advertising PDF

Author: Lisa Lynch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-12

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1351705784

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Native Advertising examines the emerging practices and norms around native advertising in US and European news organizations. Over the past five years native advertising has rapidly become a significant revenue stream for both digital news “upstarts” and legacy newspapers and magazines. This book helps scholars and students of journalism and advertising to understand the news industry’s investment in native advertising, and consider the effects this investment might have on how news is produced, consumed, and understood. It is argued that although they have deep roots in earlier forms of advertising, native ads with a political or advocacy bent have the potential to shift the relationship between news outlets and audiences in new ways, particularly in an era when trust in the media has reached a historic low point. Beyond this, such advertisements have the potential to shift how media systems function in relation to state power, by changing the relationship between commercial and non-commercial speech. Drawing on real-world examples of native ads and including an in-depth case study contributed by Ava Sirrah, Native Advertising provides an important assessment of the potential consequences of native advertising becoming an even more prominent fixture in the 21st-century news feed.

Break in Case of Emergency

Break in Case of Emergency PDF

Author: Jessica Winter

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1101946148

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“A funny and moving commentary on that point in a woman's life when everything seems to come into question." —Camille Perri, The New York Times "It's the superb insights and penetrating writing that make this book remarkable... An extraordinary debut." —The Guardian "Enthralling, sharply observed" —Marie Claire "Hilarious... The personal and workplace plots are woven together beautifully. Read, cringe, laugh, relate." —Lenny "In this cutting commentary on workplace toxicity and how its tendrils can strangle relationships, Winter uses humor to illuminate the state of modern work, family, and friendship." —Elle.com "Sassy, sarcastic and sleek, this is a wonderfully brash appraisal of how we live."—Colum McCann One of Elle Magazine's 19 Summer Books That Everyone Will Be Talking About One of Cosmo's Reads for July One of Refinery29's Two New Books to Read in July by Brilliant Debut Authors An irreverent and deeply moving comedy about friendship, fertility, and fighting for one’s sanity in a toxic workplace. Jen has reached her early thirties and has all but abandoned a once-promising painting career when, spurred by the 2008 economic crisis, she takes a poorly defined job at a feminist nonprofit. The foundation’s ostensible aim is to empower women, but staffers spend all their time devising acronyms for imaginary programs, ruthlessly undermining one another, and stroking the ego of their boss, the larger-than-life celebrity philanthropist Leora Infinitas. Jen’s complicity in this passive-aggressive hellscape only intensifies her feelings of inferiority compared to her two best friends—one a wealthy attorney with a picture-perfect family, the other a passionately committed artist—as does Jen’s apparent inability to have a baby, a source of existential panic that begins to affect her marriage and her already precarious status at the office. As Break in Case of Emergency unfolds, a fateful art exhibition, a surreal boondoggle adventure in Belize, and a devastating personal loss conspire to force Jen to reckon with some hard truths about herself and the people she loves most. Jessica Winter’s ferociously intelligent debut novel is a wry satire of celebrity do-goodism as well as an exploration of the difficulty of navigating friendships as they shift to accommodate marriage and family, and the unspoken tensions that can strain even the strongest bonds.

Live Not by Lies

Live Not by Lies PDF

Author: Rod Dreher

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0593541804

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The New York Times bestselling author of The Benedict Option draws on the wisdom of Christian survivors of Soviet persecution to warn American Christians of approaching dangers. For years, émigrés from the former Soviet bloc have been telling Rod Dreher they see telltale signs of "soft" totalitarianism cropping up in America--something more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four. Identity politics are beginning to encroach on every aspect of life. Civil liberties are increasingly seen as a threat to "safety". Progressives marginalize conservative, traditional Christians, and other dissenters. Technology and consumerism hasten the possibility of a corporate surveillance state. And the pandemic, having put millions out of work, leaves our country especially vulnerable to demagogic manipulation. In Live Not By Lies, Dreher amplifies the alarm sounded by the brave men and women who fought totalitarianism. He explains how the totalitarianism facing us today is based less on overt violence and more on psychological manipulation. He tells the stories of modern-day dissidents--clergy, laity, martyrs, and confessors from the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Europe--who offer practical advice for how to identify and resist totalitarianism in our time. Following the model offered by a prophetic World War II-era pastor who prepared believers in his Eastern European to endure the coming of communism, Live Not By Lies teaches American Christians a method for resistance: • SEE: Acknowledge the reality of the situation. • JUDGE: Assess reality in the light of what we as Christians know to be true. • ACT: Take action to protect truth. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not By Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.