Magnificence: A Novel

Magnificence: A Novel PDF

Author: Lydia Millet

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0393081702

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This novel introduces Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband's death. Suddenly gifted her great uncle's Pasadena mansion, Susan decides to restore his extensive collection of preserved animals, tending to the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails. Meanwhile, a menagerie of uniquely damaged humans - including a cheating husband and a chorus of eccentric elderly women - joins her in residence.

This Magnificent Desolation

This Magnificent Desolation PDF

Author: Thomas O'Malley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-01-01

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1408842602

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A heart-breaking, staggering, soaring novel about war, music, loneliness and the redemptive power of the imagination

How the Dead Dream

How the Dead Dream PDF

Author: Lydia Millet

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780156035460

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The newest novel from critically acclaimed Lydia Millet, How the Dead Dream is a beautiful, heart-wrenching tale and a riveting commentary on community in the modern suburban landscape and how the lives of animals are affected by it.

"Eastern Magnificence & European Ingenuity"

Author: Catherine Pagani

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9780472112081

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An exploration of the important role played by elaborate clockwork in relations between China and Europe from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries

Ghost Lights

Ghost Lights PDF

Author: Lydia Millet

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2011-09-20

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0393081710

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A funny and haunting new novel from "one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation" (Los Angeles Times). Hal is a mild-mannered IRS bureaucrat who suspects that his wife is cheating with her younger, more virile coworker. At a drunken dinner party, Hal volunteers to fly to Belize in search of Susan's employer, T.—the protagonist of Lydia Millet's much-lauded novel How the Dead Dream—who has vanished in a tropical jungle, initiating a darkly humorous descent into strange and unpredictable terrain. Salon raved that Millet's "writing is always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself." In Ghost Lights, she combines her characteristic wit and a sharp eye for the weirdness that governs human (and nonhuman) interactions. With the scathing satire and tender honesty of Sam Lipsyte and a dark, quirky, absurdist style reminiscent of Joy Williams, Millet has created a comic, startling, and surprisingly philosophical story about idealism and disillusionment, home and not home, and the singular, heartbreaking devotion of parenthood.

Magnificent Rebels

Magnificent Rebels PDF

Author: Andrea Wulf

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2023-10-10

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 1984897993

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A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ • From the best-selling author of The Invention of Nature comes an exhilarating story about a remarkable group of young rebels—poets, novelists, philosophers—who, through their epic quarrels, passionate love stories, heartbreaking grief, and radical ideas launched Romanticism onto the world stage, inspiring some of the greatest thinkers of the time. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times • The Washington Post "Make[s] the reader feel as if they were in the room with the great personalities of the age, bearing witness to their insights and their vanities and rages.” —Lauren Groff, New York Times best-selling author of Matrix When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, How can I be free? It all began in a quiet university town in Germany in the 1790s, when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, their writing, and their lives. This brilliant circle included the famous poets Goethe, Schiller, and Novalis; the visionary philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the contentious Schlegel brothers; and, in a wonderful cameo, Alexander von Humboldt. And at the heart of this group was the formidable Caroline Schlegel, who sparked their dazzling conversations about the self, nature, identity, and freedom. The French revolutionaries may have changed the political landscape of Europe, but the young Romantics incited a revolution of the mind that transformed our world forever. We are still empowered by their daring leap into the self, and by their radical notions of the creative potential of the individual, the highest aspirations of art and science, the unity of nature, and the true meaning of freedom. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfillment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our responsibilities toward our community and future generations. At the heart of this inspiring book is the extremely modern tension between the dangers of selfishness and the thrilling possibilities of free will.

The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post

The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post PDF

Author: Allison Pataki

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2023-02-07

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0593355709

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Marvelous . . . I just had to be there with the Post cereal heiress through every twist and turn.”—Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls “New-money heiress Marjorie Post isn’t content to remain a society bride as she remakes herself into a savvy entrepreneur, a visionary philanthropist, a presidential hostess, and much more.”—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie was inspired by a few simple rules: always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard—even when deemed American royalty, even while covered in imperial diamonds. Marjorie had an insatiable drive to live and love and to give more than she got. From crawling through Moscow warehouses to rescue the Tsar’s treasures to outrunning the Nazis in London, from serving the homeless of the Great Depression to entertaining Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Hollywood’s biggest stars, Marjorie Merriweather Post lived an epic life few could imagine. Marjorie’s journey began gluing cereal boxes in her father’s barn as a young girl. No one could have predicted that C. W. Post’s Cereal Company would grow into the General Foods empire and reshape the American way of life, with Marjorie as its heiress and leading lady. Not content to stay in her prescribed roles of high-society wife, mother, and hostess, Marjorie dared to demand more, making history in the process. Before turning thirty she amassed millions, becoming the wealthiest woman in the United States. But it was her life-force, advocacy, passion, and adventurous spirit that led to her stunning legacy. And yet Marjorie’s story, though full of beauty and grandeur, set in the palatial homes she built such as Mar-a-Lago, was equally marked by challenge and tumult. A wife four times over, Marjorie sought her happily-ever-after with the blue-blooded party boy who could not outrun his demons, the charismatic financier whose charm turned to betrayal, the international diplomat with a dark side, and the bon vivant whose shocking secrets would shake Marjorie and all of society. Marjorie did everything on a grand scale, especially when it came to love. Bestselling and acclaimed author Allison Pataki has crafted an intimate portrait of a larger-than-life woman, a powerful story of one woman falling in love with her own voice and embracing her own power while shaping history in the process.

The Magnificent Ambersons

The Magnificent Ambersons PDF

Author: Booth Tarkington

Publisher: Read Books Ltd

Published: 2020-12-07

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1528791681

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The second installment in Booth Tarkington's “Growth Series", “The Magnificent Ambersons” is a 1918 novel that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1919. The story continues exploring the rapid development of the Unites States through the eyes of the Ambersons, a declining aristocratic family living in Indianapolis during the final days of the Civil War. “The Magnificent Ambersons” offers the reader a fantastic glimpse of a unique part of American history and is not to be missed by fans and collectors of Tarkington's seminal work. Newton Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) was an American dramatist and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Among only three other novelists to have won the Pulitzer Prize more than once, Tarkington was one of the greatest authors of the 1910s and 1920s who helped usher in Indiana's Golden Age of literature. Other notable works by this author include: “Monsieur Beaucaire” (1900), “Penrod” (1914), and “The Turmoil” (1915). Read & Co. Classics is republishing this novel now in a new edition complete with a biography of the author from “Encyclopædia Britannica” (1922).

Manifestations of Masculine Magnificence

Manifestations of Masculine Magnificence PDF

Author: Teresa N. Washington

Publisher: Oya's Tornado

Published: 2014-02-25

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13:

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Manifestations of Masculine Magnificence: Divinity in Africana Life, Lyrics, and Literature is a remarkable study and the first of its kind. Teresa N. Washington eschews popular culture’s pimp myths and thug sagas and traces the Africana man’s power, creativity, and consciousness to his inherent divinity. Manifestations of Masculine Magnificence takes the reader to the source of power with an analysis of African Divinities and divine technologies. Washington explores the permanence and proliferation of African Gods from oppressive plantations to the empowering proclamations of such leaders as W. D. Fard, Marcus Garvey, Father Divine, and Allah, the Father. Washington analyzes the summonses to and from the Gods that resonate in the music of such artists as Erykah Badu, The RZA, Sun Ra, X Clan, and Rakim. Using literary analysis as a prism to display the diversity of Africana divinity, Washington reveals the literature of such writers as August Wilson, Walter Mosley, Toni Morrison, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Ishmael Reed to be three-way mirrors that eternally reflect and project the Gods, their myriad powers, and their weighty responsibilities. Manifestations of Masculine Magnificence will prove indispensable to independent scholars as well as scholars of Comparative Literature, Hip Hop Studies, Gender Studies, Africana Studies, Literary Criticism, and Religious Studies.