Quite A Good Time To Be Born

Quite A Good Time To Be Born PDF

Author: David Lodge

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2016-02-23

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1784700533

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'I drew my first breath on the 28th of January 1935, which was quite a good time for a future writer to be born in England...’ The only child in a lower-middle-class London family, David Lodge inherited his artistic genes from his musician father and his Catholic faith from his Irish-Belgian mother. Four years old when World War II began, David grew to maturity through decades of great social and cultural change - giving him plenty to write about. Candid, witty and insightful, Quite a Good Time to be Born illuminates a period of transition in British society, and charts the evolution of a writer whose works have become classics in his own lifetime.

A Time to Be Born

A Time to Be Born PDF

Author: Dawn Powell

Publisher: Steerforth

Published: 2011-11-08

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1581952473

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This scathing “comedy of manners” set in the 1940s “steers us through the lives of women who come to New York . . . for love, money, opportunity, and a good time” (New York Times). At the center of this 1942 novel are a wealthy, self-involved newspaper publisher and his scheming, novelist wife, Amanda Keeler—who ensnares Ohioan Vicky Haven in her social and romantic manipulations. Author Dawn Powell always denied Amanda Keeler was based upon the real-life Clare Boothe Luce until years later when she discovered a memo she’d written to herself in 1939 that said, “Why not do a novel on Clare Luce?” Which prompted Powell to write in her diary, “Who can I believe? Me or myself?” Set against an atmospheric backdrop of New York City in the months just before America’ s entry into World War II, A Time of Be Born is a scathing and hilarious study of cynical New Yorkers stalking each other for various selfish ends.

The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future

The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future PDF

Author: Perri Klass

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0393610004

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The fight against child mortality that transformed parenting, doctoring, and the way we live. Only one hundred years ago, in even the world’s wealthiest nations, children died in great numbers—of diarrhea, diphtheria, and measles, of scarlet fever and tuberculosis. Throughout history, culture has been shaped by these deaths; diaries and letters recorded them, and writers such as Louisa May Alcott, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Eugene O’Neill wrote about and mourned them. Not even the powerful and the wealthy could escape: of Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s four children, only one survived to adulthood, and the first billionaire in history, John D. Rockefeller, lost his beloved grandson to scarlet fever. For children of the poor, immigrants, enslaved people and their descendants, the chances of dying were far worse. The steady beating back of infant and child mortality is one of our greatest human achievements. Interweaving her own experiences as a medical student and doctor, Perri Klass pays tribute to groundbreaking women doctors like Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and Josephine Baker, and to the nurses, public health advocates, and scientists who brought new approaches and scientific ideas about sanitation and vaccination to families. These scientists, healers, reformers, and parents rewrote the human experience so that—for the first time in human memory—early death is now the exception rather than the rule, bringing about a fundamental transformation in society, culture, and family life. Previously published in hardcover as A Good Time to Be Born.

The Photographer as Autobiographer

The Photographer as Autobiographer PDF

Author: Arnaud Schmitt

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-09-10

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 3031088557

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This book explores hybrid memoirs, combining text and images, authored by photographers. It contextualizes this sub-category of life writing from a historical perspective within the overall context of life writing, before taking a structural and cognitive approach to the text/image relationship. While autobiographers use photographs primarily for their illustrative or referential function, photographers have a much more complex interaction with pictures in their autobiographical accounts. This book explores how the visual aspect of a memoir may drastically alter the reader’s response to the work, but also how, in other cases, the visual parts seem disconnected from the text or underused.

A Time to be Born

A Time to be Born PDF

Author: Peter Penner

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2016-06-29

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1460279344

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Having a title that suggests that I was born to do something for three generations of Russlaender Mennonites is a bit crass, and yet that is what three testimonial contributors suggest, though unknown to one another. "Peter Penner's rich and varied life exemplifies bridge-building between the worlds of church and academy. Situated as he was on the physical 'edge' of Mennonite communities for much of his career, his perspective on their history and identity is full of insight. As pastor, teacher, scholar, and volunteer, he has brought a critical yet gentle and loving eye to a lifetime of service." Marlene Epp, University of Waterloo Another, the late Paul Toews, Fresno, CA, historian, "This autobiography of Peter Penner is a vivid and powerful story of combining objective and dispassionate scholarly analysis with deep religious commitments." A third, a non-Mennonite wrote: His research and exposition of the MB Mission to India "brought together the accumulated and finely honed scholarly skills, both historical and theological, that Peter Penner possessed." Robert Eric Frykenberg, University of Wisconsin While this Memoir covers three generations, each of which has brought its different experiences, excitements, and decision-making, one constant has been the Mennonite faith and culture with which I was imbued in those first thirty years. What were those years like for me? Justina, herself the greatest of volunteers, has been my wife and companion for more than two generations. We have touched many lives, have seen many things, and have stories to tell.

Common Writing

Common Writing PDF

Author: Stefan Collini

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-03-17

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0191076775

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In a series of penetrating and attractively readable essays, Stefan Collini explores aspects of the literary and intellectual culture of Britain from the early twentieth century to the present. Common Writing focuses chiefly on writers, critics, historians, and journalists who occupied wider public roles as cultural commentators or intellectuals, as well as on the periodicals and other genres through which they attempted to reach such audiences. Among the figures discussed are T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, J.B. Priestley, C.S. Lewis, Kingsley Amis, Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Christopher Hitchens, and Michael Ignatieff. The essays explore the variety of such figures' writings - something that can get overlooked or forgotten when they are treated exclusively in terms of their contribution to one established or professional category such as 'novelist' or 'historian' - while capturing their distinctive writing voices and those indirect or implicit ways in which they position or reveal themselves in relation to specific readerships, disputes, and traditions. These essays engage with recent biographies, collections of letters, and new editions of classic works, thereby making some of the fruits of recent scholarly research available to a wider audience. Collini has been acclaimed as one of the most brilliant essayists of our time, and this collection shows him at his subtle, perceptive, and trenchant best. Common Writing will appeal to (and delight) readers interested in literature, history, and contemporary cultural debate.

Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life PDF

Author: Dacher Keltner

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2009-10-05

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0393073351

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“A landmark book in the science of emotions and its implications for ethics and human universals.”—Library Journal, starred review In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of human evolution: If humans are hardwired to lead lives that are “nasty, brutish, and short,” why have we evolved with positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and cooperative societies? Illustrated with more than fifty photographs of human emotions, Born to Be Good takes us on a journey through scientific discovery, personal narrative, and Eastern philosophy. Positive emotions, Keltner finds, lie at the core of human nature and shape our everyday behavior—and they just may be the key to understanding how we can live our lives better. Some images in this ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.

I Didn't Ask to Be Born

I Didn't Ask to Be Born PDF

Author: Bill Cosby

Publisher: Center Street

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1455505943

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In this hilarious collection of observations, Cosby brings us more of his wonderful and wacky insights into the human condition that are sure to become classics. In the tradition of Fat Albert, I DIDN'T ASK TO BE BORN offers a host of new characters, including Peanut Armhouse and Old Mother Harold. Not since Mushmouth, Dumb Donald, Bucky and the Cosby Kids has there been such a memorable cast. Over the past century few entertainers have achieved the legendary status of William H. Cosby Jr. His success spans five decades and virtually all media-remarkable accomplishments for a kid who emerged from humble beginnings in a Philly housing project. In the tradition of his bestselling books, Fatherhood and Cosbyology, the doctor of comedy holds forth on everything from first love to the Bible. Bill Cosby may not have asked to be born, but we're sure glad he was.