Walking the Clouds

Walking the Clouds PDF

Author: Grace L. Dillon

Publisher: Sun Tracks

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780816529827

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In this first-ever anthology of Indigenous science fiction Grace Dillon collects some of the finest examples of the craft with contributions by Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand Maori authors. The collection includes seminal authors such as Gerald Vizenor, historically important contributions often categorized as "magical realism" by authors like Leslie Marmon Silko and Sherman Alexie, and authors more recognizable to science fiction fans like William Sanders and Stephen Graham Jones. Dillon's engaging introduction situates the pieces in the larger context of science fiction and its conventions. Organized by sub-genre, the book starts with Native slipstream, stories infused with time travel, alternate realities and alternative history like Vizenor's "Custer on the Slipstream." Next up are stories about contact with other beings featuring, among others, an excerpt from Gerry William's The Black Ship. Dillon includes stories that highlight Indigenous science like a piece from Archie Weller's Land of the Golden Clouds, asserting that one of the roles of Native science fiction is to disentangle that science from notions of "primitive" knowledge and myth. The fourth section calls out stories of apocalypse like William Sanders' "When This World Is All on Fire" and a piece from Zainab Amadahy's The Moons of Palmares. The anthology closes with examples of biskaabiiyang, or "returning to ourselves," bringing together stories like Eden Robinson's "Terminal Avenue" and a piece from Robert Sullivan's Star Waka. An essential book for readers and students of both Native literature and science fiction, Walking the Clouds is an invaluable collection. It brings together not only great examples of Native science fiction from an internationally-known cast of authors, but Dillon's insightful scholarship sheds new light on the traditions of imagining an Indigenous future.

Walking in Clouds

Walking in Clouds PDF

Author: Kavitha Yaga Buggana

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2018-12-30

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 935302479X

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Will we make it? That's the question Kavitha and her cousin, Pallu, ask themselves as they trek through Himalayan pine forests and unforgiving mountains in Nepal and Tibet. Their goal: to reach Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar. The two women walk to ancient monasteries, meditate on freezing slopes, dance on the foothills of Kailash, and confront death in the thin mountain air. In Kailash and Manasarovar, the holiest of Hindu and Buddhist sites, they struggle to reconcile their rationalist views with faith and the beloved myths of their upbringing. Remarkably, it is this journey that helps them discover the meaning of friendship. Walking in Clouds is a beautifully crafted memoir of a journey to far-away places and to the places within. It mixes lyrical, descriptive storytelling with stunning photographs to bring to life a unique travelogue.

To Reach the Clouds

To Reach the Clouds PDF

Author: Philippe Petit

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0865476519

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A high-wire artist traces his six years of planning and training to walk a wire between the towers of the nearly completed World Trade Center in 1974 and describes the history-making realization of his goal eight times in the course of an hour.

Men on the Moon

Men on the Moon PDF

Author: Simon J. Ortiz

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 1999-07

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780816519309

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When Faustin, the old Acoma, is given his first television set, he considers it a technical wonder, a box full of mystery. What he sees on its screen that first day, however, is even more startling than the television itself: men have landed on the moon. Can this be real? For Simon Ortiz, Faustin's reaction proves that tales of ordinary occurrences can truly touch the heart. "For me," he observes, "there's never been a conscious moment without story." Best known for his poetry, Ortiz also has authored 26 short stories that have won the hearts of readers through the years. Men on the Moon brings these stories together—stories filled with memorable characters, written with love by a keen observer and interpreter of his people's community and culture. True to Native American tradition, these tales possess the immediacy—and intimacy—of stories conveyed orally. They are drawn from Ortiz's Acoma Pueblo experience but focus on situations common to Native people, whether living on the land or in cities, and on the issues that affect their lives. We meet Jimmo, a young boy learning that his father is being hunted for murder, and Kaiser, the draft refuser who always wears the suit he was given when he left prison. We also meet some curious Anglos: radicals supporting Indian causes, scholars studying Indian ways, and San Francisco hippies who want to become Indians too. Whether telling of migrants working potato fields in Idaho and pining for their Arizona home or of a father teaching his son to fly a kite, Ortiz takes readers to the heart of storytelling. Men on the Moon shows that stories told by a poet especially resound with beauty and depth.

The Walk

The Walk PDF

Author: Philippe Petit

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-07-21

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 1510703306

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Now a major motion picture directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, an artist of the air re-creates his six-year plot to pull off an act of incomparable beauty and imagination. More than a quarter century before September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center was immortalized by an act of unprecedented daring and beauty. In August 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit boldly—and illegally—fixed a rope between the tops of the still-young Twin Towers, a quarter mile off the ground. At daybreak, thousands of spectators gathered to watch in awe and adulation as he traversed the rope a full eight times in the course of an hour. In The Walk, Petit recounts the six years he spent preparing for this achievement, a tour de force of imagination and tenacity. Petit’s achievement made headlines around the world. In this stunning book, Petit tells the dramatic story of this history-making walk, from conception and clandestine planning to the performance and its aftermath. It draws on Petit’s own journals, in which he sketched and scribbled everything from his budgets to his strategies for rigging a high wire between two of the most secure towers in the world. It is a fitting tribute to those lost-but-not-forgotten symbols of human aspiration—the Twin Towers. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Walking on Clouds

Walking on Clouds PDF

Author: Pranita Goyal

Publisher: Notion Press

Published: 2020-12-19

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1637146175

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Walking on Clouds is a book of poems that will, as the title suggests, make you feel like you are walking on clouds. It is divided into two themes – Dark and Light. There are stories narrated, and each story has a unique way to make you feel like you’re in the place of the events, in an imaginary world. It’s your soul that wanders off to unknown voids and hidden jungles and thus it is the Game of Souls. Your eyes open up to a window with a magical world where everything possible is said and done. Open the Dark theme if you feel bitter, and open the Light one if you feel like having a hearty laugh.

To Reach the Clouds

To Reach the Clouds PDF

Author: Philippe Petit

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0571328628

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One night in 1974, a young Frenchman secretly - and illegally - rigged a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. At daybreak, he gave the high-wire performance of all time, making eight crossings over the course of an hour, 110 floors up above the earth, as a hundred thousand people gathered on the ground to watch.In To Reach the Clouds, now filmed as The Walk, Philippe Petit re-creates a six-year quest to realise his dream, an adventure as thrilling as the walk itself. In an unforgettable memoir he tells the story of how he conspired, connived, improvised, and insisted his way to this 'coup', abetted by a motley crew of accomplices, the occasional miracle, and his own unflagging passion. He reveals himself to be not only a virtuoso of the air but also a bold and inspired performer on the page. Animated by never-seen photographs and Petit's ingenious sketches, To Reach the Clouds is a tour de force of the imagination and a serenade to his beloved towers.

Into the Clouds: The Race to Climb the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain (Scholastic Focus)

Into the Clouds: The Race to Climb the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain (Scholastic Focus) PDF

Author: Tod Olson

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2020-04-21

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1338207377

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A nail-biting tale of survival and brotherhood atop one of the world's most dangerous mountains. This fast-paced, three-part narrative takes readers on three expeditions over 15 years to K2, one of the deadliest mountains on Earth. Roped together, these teams of men face perilously high altitudes and battering storms in hopes of reaching the summit. As each expedition sets out, they carve new paths along icy slopes and unforgiving rock, creating camps on ledges so narrow they fear turning over in their sleep. But disaster strikes -- in 1939, four men never make it down the mountain. Fourteen years later, a man develops blood clots in his legs at 25,000 feet, leaving his team with no safe path off the mountain. Filled with displays of incredible strength and heart-stopping danger, Into the Clouds tells the incredible stories of the men whose quest to conquer a mountain became a battle to survive the descent.

Faces in the Clouds

Faces in the Clouds PDF

Author: Stewart Elliott Guthrie

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1995-04-06

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0195356802

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Religion is universal human culture. No phenomenon is more widely shared or more intensely studied, yet there is no agreement on what religion is. Now, in Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie provides a provocative definition of religion in a bold and persuasive new theory. Guthrie says religion can best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism--that is, the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. Many writers see anthropomorphism as common or even universal in religion, but few think it is central. To Guthrie, however, it is fundamental. Religion, he writes, consists of seeing the world as humanlike. As Guthrie shows, people find a wide range of humanlike beings plausible: Gods, spirits, abominable snowmen, HAL the computer, Chiquita Banana. We find messages in random events such as earthquakes, weather, and traffic accidents. We say a fire "rages," a storm "wreaks vengeance," and waters "lie still." Guthrie says that our tendency to find human characteristics in the nonhuman world stems from a deep-seated perceptual strategy: in the face of pervasive (if mostly unconscious) uncertainty about what we see, we bet on the most meaningful interpretation we can. If we are in the woods and see a dark shape that might be a bear or a boulder, for example, it is good policy to think it is a bear. If we are mistaken, we lose little, and if we are right, we gain much. So, Guthrie writes, in scanning the world we always look for what most concerns us--livings things, and especially, human ones. Even animals watch for human attributes, as when birds avoid scarecrows. In short, we all follow the principle--better safe than sorry. Marshalling a wealth of evidence from anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, theology, advertising, literature, art, and animal behavior, Guthrie offers a fascinating array of examples to show how this perceptual strategy pervades secular life and how it characterizes religious experience. Challenging the very foundations of religion, Faces in the Clouds forces us to take a new look at this fundamental element of human life.

Empire of the Clouds

Empire of the Clouds PDF

Author: James Hamilton-Paterson

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2010-10-07

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0571271731

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In 1945 Britain was the world's leading designer and builder of aircraft - a world-class achievement that was not mere rhetoric. And what aircraft they were. The sleek Comet, the first jet airliner. The awesome delta-winged Vulcan, an intercontinental bomber that could be thrown about the sky like a fighter. The Hawker Hunter, the most beautiful fighter-jet ever built and the Lightning, which could zoom ten miles above the clouds in a couple of minutes and whose pilots rated flying it as better than sex. How did Britain so lose the plot that today there is not a single aircraft manufacturer of any significance in the country? What became of the great industry of de Havilland or Handley Page? And what was it like to be alive in that marvellous post-war moment when innovative new British aircraft made their debut, and pilots were the rock stars of the age? James Hamilton-Paterson captures that season of glory in a compelling book that fuses his own memories of being a schoolboy plane spotter with a ruefully realistic history of British decline - its loss of self confidence and power. It is the story of great and charismatic machines and the men who flew them: heroes such as Bill Waterton, Neville Duke, John Derry and Bill Beaumont who took inconceivable risks, so that we could fly without a second thought.