Verlag: Scratch Books
The sequel to the critically acclaimed Reverse Engineering. Reverse Engineering II brings together contemporary classic stories with their authors' discussions of how they were written. An essential book for everyone interested in how fiction works...
“In this vibrant memoir, Obama-inaugural poet Richard Blanco tenderly, exhilaratingly chronicles his Miami childhood amid a colorful, if suffocating, family of Cuban exiles, as well as his quest to find his artistic voice and the courage to accept himself as a gay man.” — O, The Oprah MagazineA poignant, hilarious, and inspiring memoir from the first Latino and openly gay inaugural poet, which explores his coming-of-age as the child of Cuban immigrants and his attempts to understand his place in America while grappling with his burgeoning artistic and sexual identities.Richard Blanco’s childhood and adolescence were experienced between two imaginary worlds: his parents’ nostalgic world of 1950s Cuba and his imagined America, the country he saw on reruns of The Brady Bunch and Leave it to Beaver—an “exotic” life he yearned for as much as he yearned to see “la patria.”A prismatic and lyrical narrative rich with the colors, sounds, smells, and textures of Miami, Richard Blanco’s personal narrative is a resonant account of how he discovered his authentic self and ultimately, a deeper understanding of what it means to be American. His is a singular yet universal story that beautifully illuminates the experience of “becoming;” how we are shaped by experiences, memories, and our complex stories: the humor, love, yearning, and tenderness that define a life.Zum Buch
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born on 9th November 1818 in Oryol, Russia to parents from the nobility. He and his two brothers were raised by their mother on the family estate. Surrounded by foreign governesses he became fluent in French, German, and English. Their father spent little time with them and this undoubtedly had an effect on him and his brothers. When he was nine the family moved to Moscow to give their children a proper education. Turgenev studied for a year at the University of Moscow and then at the University of St Petersburg to study Classics, Russian literature, and philology. During that time his father died from kidney stone disease. In 1838 Turgenev studied philosophy and history at the University of Berlin for 3 years before returning to St Petersburg for his master's. He started his career with the Russian Civil Service and it was only in 1852 that he made his name with his short story collection, ‘A Sportsman's Sketches’, based on his observations of peasant life and nature. That same year he wrote an obituary for Nikolai Gogol: "Gogol is dead!... What Russian heart is not shaken by those three words?... He is gone, that man whom we now have the right (the bitter right, given to us by death) to call great." The St Petersburg censor banned publication but the Moscow censor allowed it. He was dismissed but Turgenev was held responsible and imprisoned for a month, and then exiled to his country estate. Along with many other Russian intellectuals Turgenev left and settled in Paris in 1854. During this period he wrote his finest stories and four novels. Alexander II ascended the Russian throne in 1855, and the political climate became more relaxed, Turgenev returned home. ‘Fathers and Sons’, Turgenev's most famous and enduring novel, appeared in 1862. Its leading character is considered the first ‘Bolshevik’ in Russian literature. But the hostile reaction prompted Turgenev's decision to again leave Russia. His health declined during his later years. In January 1883, an aggressive malignant tumor was removed but by then it had metastasized in his upper spinal cord, causing him intense pain in his final few months of life. Ivan Turgenev died on 3rd September 1883 of a spinal abscess, a complication of the metastatic liposarcoma, in his house near Paris. He was buried in St Petersburg. 1 - Ivan Turgenev - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 2 - A Strange Story by Ivan Turgenev 3 - Mumu by Ivan Turgenev 4 - The District Doctor by Ivan Turgenev 5 - The Jew by Ivan Turgenev 6 - The Rendezvous by Ivan Turgenev - - - 1 - Leonid Andreyev - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 2 - Silence by Leonid Nikolaevich Andreyev 3 - Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev 4 - The City by Leonid Andreyev 5 - The Friend by Leonoid Andreyev 6 - The Lie by Leonid Andreyev 7 - The Marseillaise by Leonid AndreyevZum Buch
Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers.Fly-fishing's finest scribe, John Gierach, takes us from a nameless stream on a nameless ranch in Montana to a secret pool off a secret creek where he caught a catfish as a five-year-old, to a brook full of rattlesnakes and a private pond where the trout are all as long as your leg. As Gierach says, "The secret places are the soul of fishing." Hearing about a new one never fails to entice us.And so Where the Trout Are All as Long as Your Leg transports the listener to the best of these places, where the fish are always bigger and the hatches last forever. After all, it's these magical places that Gierach so vividly evokes that remind us how precious—and precarious—are the unspoiled havens of the natural world.Zum Buch
Jack London was born a working class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast-an oyster pirate, a hobo, a sailor, and a prospector by turns. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed bestselling books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf.The bare outlines of his story suggest a classic rags-to-riches tale, but London the man was plagued by contradictions. He chronicled nature at its most savage but wept helplessly at the deaths of his favorite animals. At his peak the highest paid writer in the United States, he was nevertheless forced to work under constant pressure for money. An irrepressibly optimistic crusader for social justice and a lover of humanity, he was also subject to spells of bitter invective, especially as his health declined. Branded by shortsighted critics as little more than a hack who produced a couple of memorable dog stories, he left behind a voluminous literary legacy, much of it ripe for rediscovery.In Jack London: An American Life, the noted Jack London scholar Earle Labor explores the brilliant and complicated novelist lost behind the myth-at once a hard-living globe-trotter and a man alive with ideas whose passion for seeking new worlds to explore never waned until the day he died. Returning London to his proper place in the American pantheon, Labor resurrects a major American novelist in his full fire and glory.Zum Buch
This “well-researched” biography “brings home something of what it was to be an army chaplain amid the battles in France and Flanders” (Methodist Recorder). Between 1916 and 1918, chaplain David Railton supported the soldiers on the Western Front in their worst moments. He buried the fallen, comforted the wounded, wrote to the families of the missing and killed, and helped the survivors to remember and mark the loss of their comrades so that they were able to carry on. He was with his men at many battles, including High Wood, the Aisne, and Passchendaele. He received the Military Cross for rescuing an officer and two men under heavy fire on the Somme. It was Railton’s idea to bring home the body of an unidentified fallen comrade from the battlefields to be buried in Westminster Abbey, and on Armistice Day 1920, he was there in the Abbey as the Unknown Warrior was laid to rest with full honors. Although suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he returned to work as a parish priest in Margate, where he took particular interest in supporting ex-servicemen who had returned home to the aftermath of a terrible war and crippling unemployment. This is the first book to explore David Railton’s life and “the padre’s flag” he used as an altar cloth and shroud throughout the war—the flag that was consecrated a year after the burial of the Unknown Warrior and hangs in Westminster Abbey to this day.Zum Buch
The United States of America has had many presidents that Americans agree were either great or awful, while some fall into a mediocre category of irrelevance. In many cases a national consensus has been reached on men like Abraham Lincoln and James Buchanan. But the president with the most controversial legacy might be “Old Hickory”, Andrew Jackson. In his lifetime, Jackson came to represent what middle class Americans viewed as the quintessential American. An Author's Republic audio production.Zum Buch
