American Scream

Download or read book American Scream written by Cynthia True and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He was a radical stand up who dared to question the values of small town America and the evils of American foreign policy. Ruthlessly honest, a voice of reason in what he saw as an insane world, Hicks refused to compromise in spite of the censorship he faced for most of his career. His entire act was once banned from The Late Show with David Letterman because he made fun of pro-lifers and the Pope. In American Scream Cynthia True gets under the skin of Hicks, the heavy-drinking, chain-smoking, drug-taking philosopher who was also gentle and kind, a good friend and a comic genius who packed enough adventure into his three decades to last three lifetimes. Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 but his comedy is more relevant today than ever. This vivid, funny, insightful book shows why. 'Conscientious, perceptive and affectionate . . . [True] understands her subject perfectly' Independent 'Intelligent and tightly researched' Guardian

Download or read book American Scream written by Jonah Raskin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-04-07 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written as a cultural weapon and a call to arms, Howl touched a raw nerve in Cold War America and has been controversial from the day it was first read aloud nearly fifty years ago. This first full critical and historical study of Howl brilliantly elucidates the nexus of politics and literature in which it was written and gives striking new portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs. Drawing from newly released psychiatric reports on Ginsberg, from interviews with his psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Hicks, and from the poet's journals, American Scream shows how Howl brought Ginsberg and the world out of the closet of a repressive society. It also gives the first full accounting of the literary figures—Eliot, Rimbaud, and Whitman—who influenced Howl, definitively placing it in the tradition of twentieth-century American poetry for the first time. As he follows the genesis and the evolution of Howl, Jonah Raskin constructs a vivid picture of a poet and an era. He illuminates the development of Beat poetry in New York and San Francisco in the 1950s--focusing on historic occasions such as the first reading of Howl at Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955 and the obscenity trial over the poem's publication. He looks closely at Ginsberg's life, including his relationships with his parents, friends, and mentors, while he was writing the poem and uses this material to illuminate the themes of madness, nakedness, and secrecy that pervade Howl. A captivating look at the cultural climate of the Cold War and at a great American poet, American Scream finally tells the full story of Howl—a rousing manifesto for a generation and a classic of twentieth-century literature.

Download or read book The American Dream Is Not Dead written by Michael R. Strain and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Populists on both sides of the political aisle routinely announce that the American Dream is dead. According to them, the game has been rigged by elites, workers can’t get ahead, wages have been stagnant for decades, and the middle class is dying. Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, disputes this rhetoric as wrong and dangerous. In this succinctly argued volume, he shows that, on measures of economic opportunity and quality of life, there has never been a better time to be alive in America. He backs his argument with overwhelming—and underreported—data to show how the facts favor realistic optimism. He warns, however, that the false prophets of populism pose a serious danger to our current and future prosperity. Their policies would leave workers worse off. And their erroneous claim that the American Dream is dead could discourage people from taking advantage of real opportunities to better their lives. If enough people start to believe the Dream is dead, they could, in effect, kill it. To prevent this self-fulfilling prophecy, Strain’s book is urgent reading for anyone feeling the pull of the populists. E. J. Dionne and Henry Olsen provide spirited responses to Strain’s argument.

Download or read book Taking a Stand written by Jared N. Champion and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Jared N. Champion, Miriam M. Chirico, Thomas Clark, David R. Dewberry, Christopher J. Gilbert, David Gillota, Kathryn Kein, Rob King, Rebecca Krefting, Peter C. Kunze, Linda Mizejewski, Aviva Orenstein, Raúl Pérez, Philip Scepanski, Susan Seizer, Monique Taylor, Ila Tyagi, and Timothy J. Viator Stand-up comedians have a long history of walking a careful line between serious and playful engagement with social issues: Lenny Bruce questioned the symbolic valence of racial slurs, Dick Gregory took time away from the stage to speak alongside Martin Luther King Jr., and—more recently—Tig Notaro challenged popular notions of damaged or abject bodies. Stand-up comedians deploy humor to open up difficult topics for broader examination, which only underscores the social and cultural importance of their work. Taking a Stand: Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians as Public Intellectuals draws together essays that contribute to the analysis of the stand-up comedian as public intellectual since the 1980s. The chapters explore stand-up comedians as contributors to and shapers of public discourse via their live performances, podcasts, social media presence, and political activism. Each chapter highlights a stand-up comedian and their ongoing discussion of a cultural issue or expression of a political ideology/standpoint: Lisa Lampanelli’s use of problematic postracial humor, Aziz Ansari’s merging of sociology and technology, or Maria Bamford’s emphasis on mental health, to name just a few. Taking a Stand offers a starting point for understanding the work stand-up comedians do as well as its reach beyond the stage. Comedians influence discourse, perspectives, even public policy on myriad issues, and this book sets out to take those jokes seriously.

Download or read book Make It Scream, Make It Burn written by Leslie Jamison and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the "astounding" (Entertainment Weekly), "spectacularly evocative" (The Atlantic), and "brilliant" (Los Angeles Times) author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes a return to the essay form in this expansive book. With the virtuosic synthesis of memoir, criticism, and journalism for which Leslie Jamison has been so widely acclaimed, the fourteen essays in Make It Scream, Make It Burn explore the oceanic depths of longing and the reverberations of obsession. Among Jamison's subjects are 52 Blue, deemed "the loneliest whale in the world"; the eerie past-life memories of children; the devoted citizens of an online world called Second Life; the haunted landscape of the Sri Lankan Civil War; and an entire museum dedicated to the relics of broken relationships. Jamison follows these examinations to more personal reckonings -- with elusive men and ruptured romances, with marriage and maternity -- in essays about eloping in Las Vegas, becoming a stepmother, and giving birth. Often compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, and widely considered one of the defining voices of her generation, Jamison interrogates her own life with the same nuance and rigor she brings to her subjects. The result is a provocative reminder of the joy and sustenance that can be found in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay One of the fall's most anticipated books: Time, Entertainment Weekly, O, Oprah Magazine, Boston Globe, Newsweek, Esquire, Seattle Times, Baltimore Sun, BuzzFeed, BookPage, The Millions, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Lit Hub, Women's Day, AV Club, Nylon, Bustle, Goop, Goodreads, Book Riot, Yahoo! Lifestyle, Pacific Standard, The Week, and Romper.

Download or read book The Swan written by Daniel R. Cillis Ph.D. and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2021-09-02 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Russian Civil War, that followed the Russian Revolutions of 1917, the royal family of Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra and their 5 children were arrested and executed. The killing of the Romanov family by the Ural Bolsheviks captured worldwide attention. Eventually, the story faded from widespread public mindfulness. Yet, one woman who was close to the family cannot forget the brutal slaughter. She remains painfully aware and burns with an all-consuming lust for revenge. In this fast paced story, with a keen attention to its historical context, we meet the Swan and learn of her ties to the Romanovs, her aristocratic background and her life in Petrograd. Her time spent in grand palaces, ballrooms, the opera and ballet was under a cloud of impending revolution. Then, in fear of the Bolsheviks she fled Russia aboard a British Navy vessel. In New York, the Swan achieves her goal of infiltrating the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation. Once trusted by the Bureau of Investigation, Agent Adobe Centori is attracted to her grace and beauty. Centori discovers that the Swan’s mission is deception. As their relationship progresses, he learns more about her involvement with the new Soviet regime—and her true colors.

Download or read book The Nation and its Margins written by Aditi Chandra and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-13 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume questions the idea that the nation-state is the only available form of community, and challenges its hegemonic control over forms of socio-cultural belonging. The contributions here explore cross-cultural and transnational encounters which highlight narratives that escape the neat boundaries constructed by nationalities. They complicate our understanding of peoples and groups and the varying spaces they inhabit by allowing narratives that have been made invisible, due to hegemonic national control, to emerge. This volume throws light on moments of cultural encounters in the Global South, specifically South Asia, South-east Asia, West Asia, and Latin America, exploring what happens when diverse communities come together to challenge the notion that claiming national identity is the only acceptable mode of being, belonging, and existing in the world. In doing so, the book reveals other radically innovative forms of attaining cohesion and identity.