In Fools Paradise

Download or read book Fool's Paradise written by Steven Gaines and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-12-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow comes a remarkably revealing profile of the Miami Beach no one knows–a tale of fabulous excess, thwarted power, and rekindled lives that will take its place among the decade’s best works of social portraiture. Created from a mix of swampland and dredged-up barrier reef, Miami Beach has always been one part drifter-mecca and one part fantasyland, simultaneously a catch basin for con men, fast-talk artists, and shameless self-promoters, and a Shangri-La for sun worshippers and hardcore hedonists. In Miami Beach it’s often said that "if you’re not indicted you’re not invited." But the city’s mad, fascinating complexity resists easy stereotyping. Fool’s Paradise is more than just a present-day profile of a dark Eden. Gaines journeys back into the city’s social and cultural history, unearthing stories of the resort’s past that are every bit as absorbing–and jaw-dropping–as those of its present. The book begins with a snapshot of the city’s current excess (this is, after all, a sun-washed hamlet that boasts, on a per capita basis, more bars–and breast implants–than any other place in America), then plunges into the Beach’s origins, chronicling the audacious rise of such hoteliers as the Fontainebleau’s Ben Novack and the Eden Roc’s Harry Mufson, the sharp-elbowed tactics of Al Capone and Frank Sinatra, and the Mac-10 shooting sprees of the Marielito and Colombian drug lords. From there, the narrative shifts to two wildly eccentric souls who gave their lives to preserving the city’s architectural dazzle and creating its color palette, introduces us to "the Most Powerful Man in Miami Beach," and arrives finally in the modern day, where we meet, among others, a kinky German playboy who once owned a quarter of South Beach and publicly flaunts his sexual escapades; a fabulously successful nightclub promoter whose addictive past seems to have given him a portal into the night world’s id; and a gaggle of young sexy models, dreamers, and schemers on a mission to achieve significance. Evoking the Beach’s surreal blend of flashy Vegas and old Hollywood glamour, as well as its manic desperation and reckless wealth, Gaines persuasively demonstrates that though the Beach is–in the words of its most famous drag queen–"an island of broken toys . . . a place where people get away with things they’d never get away with anyplace else," it casts an irresistible spell.

Download or read book Robert B. Parker's Fool's Paradise written by Mike Lupica and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When an unknown man is found murdered in Paradise, Jesse Stone will have his hands full finding out who he was--and what he was seeking. When a body is discovered at the lake in Paradise, Police Chief Jesse Stone is surprised to find he recognizes the murder victim--the man had been at the same AA meeting as Jesse the evening before. But otherwise, Jesse has no clue as to the man's identity. He isn't a local, nor does he have ID on him, nor does any neighboring state have a reported missing person matching his description. Their single lead is from a taxi company that recalls dropping off the mysterious stranger outside the gate at the mansion of one of the wealthiest families in town. . . . Meanwhile, after Jesse survives a hail of gunfire on his home, he wonders if it could be related to the murder. When both Molly Crane and Suitcase Simpson also become targets, it's clear someone has an ax to grind against the entire Paradise PD.

Download or read book Fool's Paradise written by John Gierach and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-05-06 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lighthearted and lyrical new collection of observations on fly-fishing by the author of Still Life with Brook Trout features whimsical complaints about what the author believes is wrong with the world, both within and outside the fishing community. 50,000 first printing.

Download or read book A Fool's Paradise written by Anita Konkka and published by Dalkey Archive Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overeducated, unemployed, recently dumped, and depressed, the 38-year-old nameless narrator is a familiar American character, except she's Finnish. It is the 1980s, her married Russian lover has recently left her, and the narrator compulsively writes in her journal as she tries to put her life back together. Obsessed with omens, astrology, dreams, fortune-tellers, and other objects of the paranormal, the narrator is both funny and morose.

Download or read book A Fool's Paradise written by Nancy Flowers Wilson and published by Writers and Poets USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Story about two bright black young women and their struggle to pull through their downfalls and come to terms with the happenings.

Download or read book Fool's Paradise written by Stewart Justman and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 2005 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the channels of the mass media, celebrity psychologists urge us to realize that society has robbed us of our authentic selves. That every moral standard or prohibition imposes on our selfhoods. That what we have inherited from the past is false. That we ourselves are the only truth in a world of lies. That we must challenge "virtually everything." That we must "wipe the slate clean and start over." Each of these "principles" is a commonplace of pop psychology, and each has almost unimaginably radical implications. Where did pop psychology come from, and what are its promises--and fallacies? How is it that we have elevated people like Phil McGraw, Theodore Rubin, Wayne Dyer, M. Scott Peck, Thomas Harris, John Gray, and many other self-help gurus to priestly status in American culture? In Fool's Paradise, the award-winning essayist Stewart Justman traces the inspiration of the pop psychology movement to the utopianism of the 1960s and argues that it consistently misuses the rhetoric that grew out of the civil rights movement. Speaking as it does in the name of our right to happiness, pop psychology promises liberation from all that interferes with our power to create the selves we want. In so doing, Mr. Justman writes, it not only defies reality but corrodes the traditions and attachments that give depth and richness to human life. His witty and astringent appraisal of the world of pop psychology, which quotes liberally from the most popular sources of advice, is an essential social corrective as well as a vastly entertaining and stimulating book.

Download or read book Fool's Paradise written by Dean Stewart and published by Heyday Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carey McWilliams (1905-1980) -- lawyer, activist, historian, editor of The Nation for two decades -- wrote the history of California as no one else could, or would. Alternately scathing, amusing, and disturbing, his sharp and literate accounts shatter the myths meant to obscure the real workings of the state, revealing always the relationship between the exploited and those who would exploit them.Readers will find that McWilliams's writing on history and the issues of his day is still relevant -- in fact, it is the basis for the field that we now call California studies