Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Rude Talk in Athens - Ancient...

  Mark Haskell Smith

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  "Rude Talk in Athens is brave, brilliant, and incredibly funny. There are loads of very specific characters, including Mark himself. It's the Mark Haskell Smith version of hanging out with Stanley Tucci and Anthony Bourdain, but in present day and ancient Greece. I agree with everything he says about comedy and have never read anything like it." ―Barry Sonnenfeld, Film Director and author of Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother: Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker
  
  In ancient Athens, thousands would attend theatre festivals that turned writing into a fierce battle for fame, money, and laughably large trophies. While the tragedies earned artistic respect, it was the comedies―the raunchy jokes, vulgar innuendo, outrageous invention, and barbed political commentary―that captured the imagination of the city.
  The writers of these comedic plays feuded openly, insulting one another from the stage, each production more inventive and outlandish than the last, as they tried to win first prize. Of these writers, only the work of Aristophanes has survived and it’s only through his plays that we know about his peers: Cratinus, the great lush; Eupolis, the copycat; and Ariphrades, the sexual deviant. It might have been the golden age of Democracy, but for comic playwrights, it was the age of Rude Talk.
  Watching a production of an Aristophanes play in 2019 CE and seeing the audience laugh uproariously at every joke, Mark Haskell Smith began to wonder: what does it tell us about society and humanity that these ancient punchlines still land? When insults and jokes made thousands of years ago continue to be both offensive and still make us laugh?
  Through conversations with historians, politicians, and other writers, the always witty and effusive Smith embarks on a personal mission (bordering on obsession) exploring the life of one of these unknown writers, and how comedy challenged the patriarchy, the military, and the powers that be, both then and now. A comic writer himself and author of many books and screenplays, Smith also looks back at his own career, his love for the uniquely dynamic city of Athens, and what it means for a writer to leave a legacy.

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  Letters from a Farmer in...

  John Dickinson

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  Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania is a series of essays written by the Pennsylvania lawyer and legislator John Dickinson (1732–1808) and published under the name "A Farmer" from 1767 to 1768. The twelve letters were widely read and reprinted throughout the thirteen colonies and were important in uniting the colonists against the Townshend Acts. (Wikipedia)

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  The Last Jew of Treblinka - A...

  Chil Rajchman

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  From one of the lone survivors of the Treblinka concentration camp comes a devastating memoir of the Holocaust in the tradition of Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz.   Why did some live while so many others perished? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls—in the gas chambers of Treblinka, all were equal. A central cog in the wheel of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, the fires of Treblinka were kept burning night and day.   Chil Rajchman was twenty-eight when he arrived at Treblinka in 1942. At the extermination camp, he was forced to work as a “barber,” shaving the heads of victims, and a “dentist,” pulling gold teeth from corpses. But he escaped eleven months later and survived to tell the shocking and heartbreaking tale of his experience—and of those who didn’t make it out alive.   Elie Wiesel calls The Last Jew of Treblinka “an important, heart-rending contribution to our search for truth.” Poignant and powerful, this memoir provides the only survivors’ record of the horrifying Polish extermination camp. Originally written in Yiddish in 1945, without hope or agenda other than to bear witness, Rajchman’s story shows that remembering is sometimes the bravest and most painful act of all.  

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  The Boy with Two Hearts - A...

  Hamed Amiri

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  When Hamed Amiri was ten years old he watched his mother give a speech in his home town of Herat, Afghanistan, speaking out for women's rights and education, and against the ruling Taliban. That night, an order was given for her execution. The family packed up their most precious belongings and escaped in darkness, starting what would be a long and dangerous journey. But his mother's was not the only life in danger. Hamed's older brother suffered from a rare heart condition, and this escape offered a chance of life-saving treatment in the West. Exploring the humanity of refugeeism, this is not only a tale of a family in crisis, but a love letter to the NHS, which provided hope and reassurance as they sought asylum in the UK and fought to save their loved ones.

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  Charleston Dreams

  Doc King Cole

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  The place where the author tells you what the story is about.  The scene; Charleston SC, party capital of the South East. The epoch 1990-2002 and the theme, what is full maybe soon become empty.  This concerns money, time, alcohol, and other vices. I am writing to you young eager college freshman that might be missing something in your life.  It deals with you and your dreams.  It could mean the difference between you becoming a meager wage earner or a happy, content person with solid footing.  You peers may determine your future if you allow them to kill your dreams. Come with me to the year of 1990.  The pace was slower, people were not addicted to the ‘net, cell phones, and texting someone was still on a sticky piece of paper.  Flyers of local bands were plentiful and formed a backdrop of human color to the polished college campus.  The Doric columns by the Cistern at the College of Knowledge held sway over us.  The neo-European classical architecture, bordered with world famous iron works constantly reminded us of the genteel nature of Charleston SC.   Club venues like Café 99, East Bay Trading Company, the Tree house, the Juke-box, Myskans, Henry’s, High Cotton, A. C’s, Mike Calder’s Pub, Indigo’s were some of the happiest spots on the Earth for us soon to be adults.  What mattered to us were the music, the wine, and the sunshine.  For beaches were also part of that innocent charm Charleston warmed us with during the early 1990s.  Some of the clubs you did not want to go due continual beer fights are not listed, but still sit invitingly to College of Knowledge students to this day! Plus other Tales from Market and Calhoun Streets during wonderful weekends of 1999-2002. I was a lowly U. S. Navy veteran who just finished four years of playing a Marine at MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) Beaufort.  More on that story later.  Well for most of you freshman orientation is a drag.  As it was for me, but what it did do was provide me with some direction.

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  Hal Moore - A Soldier Once And...

  Mike Guardia

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  The definitive biography of Harold G. Moore, hero of the Vietnam War and author of the bestselling memoir of the battle at Ia Drang. Hal Moore, one of the most admired American combat leaders of the last fifty years, has until now been best known to the public for being portrayed by Mel Gibson in the movie We Were Soldiers. In this first-ever, fully illustrated biography, we finally learn the full story of one of America’s true military heroes. A 1945 graduate of West Point, Moore’s first combats occurred during the Korean War, where he fought in the battles of Old Baldy, T-Bone, and Pork Chop Hill. At the beginning of the Vietnam War, Moore commanded the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry in the first full-fledged battle between US and North Vietnamese regulars. Drastically outnumbered and nearly overrun, Moore led from the front, and though losing seventy-nine soldiers, accounted for 1,200 of the enemy before the Communists withdrew. This Battle of Ia Drang pioneered the use of “air mobile infantry”—delivering troops into battle via helicopter—which became the staple of US operations for the remainder of the war. He later wrote of his experiences in the bestselling book We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young. Following his tour in Vietnam, he assumed command of the 7th Infantry Division, forward-stationed in South Korea, and in 1971, he took command of the Army Training Center at Fort Ord, California. In this capacity, he oversaw the US Army’s transition from a conscript-based to an all-volunteer force. He retired as a lieutenant general in 1977. Hal Moore graciously allowed the author interviews and granted full access to his files and collection of letters, documents, and never-before-published photographs. 

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