This is the first biography of Ralph Peer, the adventurous--even revolutionary--A&R man and music publisher who saw the universal power locked in regional roots music and tapped it, changing the b
W. Somerset Maugham’s masterwork is the coming-of-age story of Philip Carey, a sensitive young man consumed by an unrequited and self-destructive love.Born with a clubfoot, Philip is orphaned as a child and raised by unsympathetic relatives. Sent to a boarding school where he has difficulty fitting in, he grows up with an intense longing for love, art, and experience. After failing to become an artist in Paris, he begins medical studies in London, where he meets Mildred, a cold-hearted waitress with whom he falls into a powerful, tortured, life-altering love affair. This is the most autobiographical of Maugham’s works, with Philip’s malformed foot standing in for Maugham’s stutter, and the character’s painful romantic struggles inspired by the author’s own intense love affairs with both men and women. A brilliant and deeply moving portrayal of the price of passion and the universal desire for connection,Of Human Bondage stands as one of the most accomplished novels in English literatur
Every person on our home planet is affected by a worldwide deluge of man-made chemicals and pollutants - most of which have never been tested for safety. Our chemical emissions are six times larger than our total greenhouse gas emissions. They are in our food, our water, the air we breathe, our homes and workplaces, the things we use each day. This universal poisoning affects our minds, our bodies, our genes, our grandkids, and all life on Earth. Julian Cribb describes the full scale of the chemical catastrophe we have unleashed. He proposes a new Human Right - not to be poisoned. He maps an empowering and hopeful way forward: to rid our planet of these toxins and return Earth to the clean, healthy condition which our forebears enjoyed, and our grandchildren should too.
The term ‘jar’ refers to any man-made shape with the capacity to enclose something. Few objects are as universal and multi-functional as a jar – regardless of whether they contain food or drink, matter or a void, life-giving medicine or the ashes of the deceased. As ubiquitous as they may seem, such containers, storage vessels and urns are, as this book demonstrates, highly significant cultural and historical artefacts that mediate between content and environment, exterior worlds and interior enclosures, local and global, this-worldly and otherworldly realms. The contributors to this volume understand jars not only as household utensils or evidence of human civilizations, but also as artefacts in their own right. Asian jars are culturally and aesthetically defined crafted goods and as objects charged with spiritual meanings and ritual significance. Transformative Jars situates Asian jars in a global context and focuses on relationships between the filling, emptying and re-filling of
Why do we sing and what first drove early humans to sing? How might they have sung and how might those styles have survived to the present day? This history addresses these questions and many more, examining singing as a historical and cross-cultural phenomenon. It explores the evolution of singing in a global context - from Neanderthal Man to Auto-tune via the infinite varieties of world music from Orient to Occident, classical music from medieval music to the avant-garde and popular music from vaudeville to rock and beyond. Considering singing as a universal human activity, the book provides an in-depth perspective on singing from many cultures and periods: Western and non-Western, prehistoric to present. Written in a lively and entertaining style, the history contains a comprehensive reference section for those who wish to explore the topic further and will appeal to an international readership of singers, students and scholars.
The sword is the most revered of all of man’s weapons. Although the club is older, the knife more universal, and the firearm much more efficient, it is to the sword that most decoration, myth,
Many are familiar with Joseph Campbell's theory of the hero's journey, the idea that every man from Moses to Hercules grows to adulthood while battling his alter-ego. This book explores the universal
Booker Prize-winner Anita Brookner captures the magic and depth of real life with this story of an ordinary man whose unexpected longings, doubts, and fears are universal.?Paul Sturgis is resigned to
Tales of shipwrecks have a definite fascination and a universal appeal. They are not only exciting and thrilling but usually contain some element of mystery. They recount the struggle of man to surviv
In May 1962, as the struggle for civil rights heated up in the United States and leaders of the Catholic Church prepared to meet for Vatican Council II, Pope John XXIII named the first black saint of the Americas, the Peruvian Martín de Porres (1579–1639), and designated him the patron of racial justice. The son of a Spanish father and a former slavewoman from Panamá, Martín served a lifetime as the barber and nurse at the great Dominican monastery in Lima. This book draws on visual representations of Martín and the testimony of his contemporaries to produce the first biography of this pious and industrious black man from the cosmopolitan capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The book vividly chronicles the evolving interpretations of his legend and his miracles, and traces the centuries-long campaign to formally proclaim Martín de Porres a hero of universal Catholicism.
Now in paperback: An LGBTQ memoir with insights on raising a family-from a gay transgender man who shares his experience with both pregnancy and adoption"Trystan Reese writes with great tenderness and compassion. . . . [This book] limns the exact quality of joy that can inhere in inventing not only yourself, but also the world you live in."-Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the TreeAn inspiring memoir with universal lessons that will help all parents through the trials of raising childrenTrystan Reese is a gay transgender man married to Biff, a gay man who is not transgender. The young couple had been together a little over a year when they learned that Biff's one-year-old niece, Hailey, and three-year-old nephew, Riley, were about to be removed from their home by Child Protective Services because of abuse and neglect. Trystan and Biff made an immediate decision to take them in. Overnight, they became parents to two tiny, scared kids a
