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This Woman's Work: Essays on Music
by VariousThis Woman's Work: Essays on Music is edited by Kim Gordon and Sinéad Gleeson and features contributors Anne Enright, Fatima Bhutto, Jenn Pelly, Rachel Kushner, Juliana Huxtable, Leslie Jamison, Liz Pelly, Maggie Nelson, Margo Jefferson, Megan Jasper, Ottessa Moshfegh, Simone White, Yiyun Li and Zakia Sewell.Published to challenge the historic narrative of music and music writing being written by men, for men, This Woman's Work seeks to confront the male dominance and sexism that have been hard-coded in the canons of music, literature, and film and has forced women to fight pigeon-holing or being side-lined by carving out their own space. Women have to speak up, to shout louder to tell their story - like the auteurs and ground-breakers featured in this collection, including: Anne Enright on Laurie Anderson; Megan Jasper on her ground-breaking work with Sub Pop; Margo Jefferson on Bud Powell and Ella Fitzgerald; and Fatima Bhutto on music and dictatorship.This Woman's Work also features writing on the experimentalists, women who blended music and activism, the genre-breakers, the vocal auteurs; stories of lost homelands and friends; of propaganda and dictatorships, the women of folk and country, the racialised tropes of jazz, the music of Trap and Carriacou; of mixtapes and violin lessons.
This Woman's Work: The Writing and Activism of Bebe Moore Campbell (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies)
by Osizwe Raena HarwellThis Woman's Work presents a social history and critical biography based on the life of award-winning writer Bebe Moore Campbell (1950-2006). It offers the personal story of a popular novelist, journalist, and mental health advocate. This book examines Campbell's life and activism in two periods: first, as a student at the University of Pittsburgh during the 1960s black student movement and, second, as a mental health advocate near the end of her life in 2006. It describes Campbell's activism within the Black Action Society from 1967 to 1971 and her negotiation of the Black Nationalist ideologies espoused during the 1960s. The book also explores Campbell's later involvement in the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), her role as a national spokesperson, and the local activism that sparked the birth of the NAMI Urban-Los Angeles chapter, which served black and Latino communities (1999-2006).Adjacent to her activist work, Campbell's first novel, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, connects to her emerging political consciousness (related to race and gender) and the concern for racial violence during the US black liberation period from 1950 to 1970. Similarly Campbell's final novel, 72 Hour Hold, is examined closely for its connection to her activism as well as the sociopolitical commentary, emphasis on mental health disparities, coping with mental illness, and advocacy in black communities. As a writer and activist, Campbell immersed her readers in immediately relevant historical and sociopolitical matters. This Woman's Work is the first full-length biography of Bebe Moore Campbell and details the seamless marriage of her fiction writing and community activism.
This Woman: Myra Hindley's Prison Love Affair and Escape Attempt
by Howard SounesThe true account of the scandalous affair between one of Britain&’s most notorious murderers, Myra Hindley, and a prison guard—and their jailbreak plot to run away together. Myra Hindley was convicted in 1966, with her boyfriend Ian Brady, of what became known as the Moors Murders. Between July 1963 and October 1965 the couple sexually assaulted and killed five children and teenagers. Four bodies were buried on the moors near Manchester, and a tape recording was played in court of one child begging Hindley for their life. Hindley became an icon of evil, but in 1973, in London&’s Holloway prison, one woman fell in love with her. Hindley was a highly intelligent woman capable of charming anyone. Desperate to regain her freedom, she convinced an infatuated prison guard named Patricia Cairns, a former Carmelite nun, that she was a reformed woman who wanted to return to the Catholic church. Believing Hindley was sincere, yet had no chance of parole, Cairns plotted to break Hindley out of prison. This riveting story is told in vivid detail based on prison records and new interviews with former prison staff, inmates, and even the women&’s accomplice. Interspersed with powerful accounts of the Moors Murders, This Woman reveals Hindley&’s complex character and fiendish powers of manipulation—skills she used to lure children to their deaths in the 1960s, and used again to try to escape from prison.
This Woman: Myra Hindley’s Prison Love Affair and Escape Attempt
by Howard SounesIn 1973, Myra Hindley, the most notorious woman in Britain, is serving a life sentence for the moors murders - a case that shocked the world. Behind bars she has fallen in love.When Hindley is refused parole she persuades a sympathetic prison officer and former nun to help her break out of London's grim Holloway prison. The women plan to run away together to Brazil.Twenty years after Hindley's death, this extraordinary true story is brought to life in vivid new detail by Howard Sounes, author of the true crime classic Fred & Rose, drawing on unseen prison files and new interviews with former Holloway inmates, prison officers and detectives. It is a tale of infatuation and manipulation, crime and punishment.Despite her part in the appalling murders of five children and teenagers, Myra Hindley is revealed as a highly complex woman of intelligence and charm, which she used to get what she wanted. Or was she, as her supporters claimed, a misunderstood person who regretted her past and only attempted to escape out of desperation?Revealing the 'most wicked woman in Britain' in new light, This Woman is an atmospheric prison story and a love story that will make readers think again about the woman behind the moors murders.
This Won't Hurt a Bit: (And Other White Lies): My Education in Medicine and Motherhood
by Michelle AuMichelle Au started medical school armed only with a surfeit of idealism, a handful of old ER episodes for reference, and some vague notion about "helping people."This Won't Hurt a Bit is the story of how she grew up and became a real doctor.It's a no-holds-barred account of what a modern medical education feels like, from the grim to the ridiculous, from the heartwarming to the obscene. Unlike most medical memoirs, however, this one details the author's struggles to maintain a life outside of the hospital, in the small amount of free time she had to live it. And, after she and her husband have a baby early in both their medical residencies, Au explores the demands of being a parent with those of a physician, two all-consuming jobs in which the lives of others are very literally in her hands.Au's stories range from hilarious to heartbreaking and hit every note in between, proving more than anything that the creation of a new doctor (and a new parent) is far messier, far more uncertain, and far more gratifying than one could ever expect.
This Year, Maybe: From the author of A Gift in December
by Jenny GladwellThe new heart-warming novel from the Kindle bestselling author of A Gift in December, Jenny Gladwell, about a widowed mother and daughter coming together to pull together the perfect family Christmas.Sometimes you have to fall apart to become whole again... Kate is a successful interior designer with two wonderful kids. Kate is also a recent widow, a grieving daughter and worrying about how to pay the bills. Her life might look perfect from the outside, but making things look better than they are is just how Kate copes. Her mother, Jean, worries about her - but she has her own problems. A mystery from the past has come back to haunt her, and she decides now is the time to put the pieces together. When romance makes an appearance in both their lives, can mother and daughter lay the past to rest - and begin again?(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
This is Gomorrah: Shortlisted for the CWA 2020 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award
by Tom ChatfieldThe Dark Web is everywhere - and those who know where to look, and who to ask, can find anything. Drugs, guns, porn, ideologies, lives and deaths are all up for sale . . . and everything must go. Set in the technological underbelly of the 21st century, this conspiracy thriller follows elite hacker Azi Bello on a journey of discovery into the dark marketplace known as Gomorrah, within which the world's worst people trade lives and influence. Taking the reader between London, Berlin, Athens and Los Angeles, as well as into terrorist-controlled Syrian cities, THIS IS GOMORRAH explores what it means to win, and to lose, at the global game of ideology and power. A loner, charmer, idealist and connoisseur of other people's mistakes, Azi's life is spun around by a mysterious approach from a young Muslim woman called Munira, and before long his carefully crafted privacy comes crashing down. Munira is at her wits' end, a fellow hacker whose cousin has been recruited by terrorists, and who has unearthed a terrible conspiracy in her struggle to bring him home. She needs Azi's help and connections to track him down. But can she be trusted? Can Azi trust anyone when identities can be changed with just a few clicks. . ?(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
This is Gonna Hurt
by Marc Shapiro Tito OrtizHe's the ultimate showman in the world's greatest spectator sport -- a controversial, charismatic figure who has dominated Ultimate Fighting for more than ten years as one of its most exciting and skillful stars. But for Tito Ortiz, life very nearly took a different path. Growing up in Huntington Beach, California, Ortiz spent part of his childhood living in motels and in the backs of other people's houses, as his heroin-addicted parents were forced to leave one apartment after another. By the time he was in sixth grade, he had dabbled in almost every drug available, and his early youth involved time in juvenile detention centers, a string of petty crimes, and a stint in a local gang. Then, in high school, Tito discovered wrestling -- the perfect match for this tough, streetwise, ambitious kid. Tito made his mixed martial arts debut at UFC 13 in 1997, winning his first fight in twenty-two seconds. In 2000, he was chosen as a light heavyweight contender in UFC 25 and took the belt, successfully defending it five times in the following three years. Tito Ortiz pulls no punches as he recounts his journey from Huntington Beach Bad Boy to UFC superstardom -- his difficult upbringing, his first marriage and struggles with fidelity, his battles with the UFC, his career highs and lows, and his current happy relationship with former porn star Jenna Jameson. An inspirational story of beating the odds, and an incredible glimpse into just what it takes to win in the world's most brutal arena, This Is Gonna Hurt is raw, frank, funny, and as fearless as its subject.
This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships
by Matthew Fray'This Is How Your Marriage Ends is the book we have been waiting for - an entertaining, honest, and truly practical guide for saving our relationships' Justin Baldoni, bestselling author of Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity'Funny and poignant ... a beautiful exposition on partnerships, love, and unpaid labor' Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair PlayGood people can be bad partnersOne night during his divorce, after one too many vodkas and a phone-in-therapist's advice to 'journal his feelings,' Matthew Fray started a blog. On it, he tried to piece together how his ex-wife went from the college freshman who adored him to the angry woman who thought he was an asshole. It turns out that even though he was a decentguy, he was kind of a shitty husband.As he shared raw, uncomfortable and darkly humorous stories about the lessons he'd learned from his failed marriage, Matthew started to gain a following. Then he wrote a post titled 'She Divorced Me Because I left the Dishes by the Sink' - it went viral and was read over four million times.This is How Your Marriage Ends offers immediately actionable advice to help readers identify toxic behaviour patterns in their own lives, and break them out of the cycles of dysfunction that ruin relationships. Good people can be bad partners - this book is how you change that.
This is Me, Jack Vance
by Jack VanceJack Vance has long been one of the most influential, admired and imitated writers in science fiction and fantasy literature, the award-winning author of such widely acclaimed works as The Dying Earth, the Lyonesse trilogy, the adventures of Cugel the Clever, the Demon Princes series, and many other masterful tales set among the stars, in exotic fantasy realms or on our own Earth.For much of his career, Vance has also been one of the field's most private writers, an author who preferred to let his work speak for him. Now, at last, to coincide with the release of the tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth, Jack gives us this intimate and fascinating glimpse into his rich and eventful life, and a valuable insight into how he went about practicing his craft.For fans of the Grand Master's work, these memoirs are something to be treasured.
This is Not a Pity Memoir: The heartbreaking and life-affirming bestseller from the creator of ERIC
by Abi MorganBoth very funny and as propulsive as a thriller . . . impossible to put down' RACHEL COOKE, Observer'The kind of book you will find yourself saying urgently, over and over, to friends: 'Have you read it?' CAITLIN MORAN'Gripping, funny and always honest' DAVID NICHOLLS'Extraordinary . . . utterly compelling and so honestly told' NIGELLA LAWSON'Truly breathtaking. I could not have loved it more' CAREY MULLIGAN________________________An ordinary day.The end of ordinary life.One morning in June, Abi had her to-do list - drop the kids to school, get coffee and go to work. Jacob had a bad headache so she added 'pick up steroids'. She returned home and found the man she loved and fought and laughed with for twenty years lying on the bathroom floor. And nothing would ever be the same again. But this is not a pity memoir. It's about meeting your person. And crazed late night Google trawls. It's about the things you wished you'd said to the person that matters then wildly over-sharing with the barista who doesn't know you at all. It's about sushi and the wrong shoes and the moments you want to shout 'cut'. It's about the silence when you are lost in space and the importance of family and parties and noise. It's the difference between surviving and living. It's a reminder that, even in the worst times, there is light ahead. It's a love story.
This is Not a Pity Memoir: The heartbreaking and life-affirming bestseller from the writer of The Split
by Abi MorganAn ordinary day.The end of ordinary life. One morning in June, Abi had her to-do list - drop the kids to school, get coffee and go to work. Jacob had a bad headache so she added 'pick up steroids'. She returned home and found the man she loved and fought and laughed with for twenty years lying on the bathroom floor. And nothing would ever be the same again. But this is not a pity memoir. It's about meeting your person. And crazed late night Google trawls. It's about the things you wished you'd said to the person that matters then wildly over-sharing with the barista who doesn't know you at all. It's about sushi and the wrong shoes and the moments you want to shout 'cut'. It's about the silence when you are lost in space and the importance of family and parties and noise. It's the difference between surviving and living. It's a reminder that, even in the worst times, there is light ahead. It's a love story. (P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
This is a Soul: The Mission of Rick Hodes
by Marilyn Berger"Whoever Saves a Life, It Is Considered as If He Saved an Entire World"Dr. Rick Hodes arrived in Africa more than two decades ago to help the victims of a famine, but he never expected to call this extremely poor continent his home. Twenty-eight years later, he is still there.This Is a Soul tells the remarkable story of Rick Hodes's journey from suburban America to Mother Teresa's clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As a boy, Rick was devoted to helping those in need, and eventually he determined that becoming a doctor would allow him to do the most good. When he heard about famine in Africa, that's where he went, and when genocide convulsed Rwanda, he went into the refugee camps to minister to the victims. When he was told that Ethiopia was allowing its Jews to emigrate to Israel, he went to help. While there, he was drawn to Mother Teresa's mission in Addis Ababa. It was there that Rick found his calling when he began caring for the sickest children in one of the world's poorest countries. But he did more than that—he began taking them into his home and officially adopted five of them. This Is a Soul is also a book filled with great joy and triumph. When Rick's kids return from surgery or life-saving treatments, he is exultant. "Seeing these people after surgery is like going to heaven," he says.Marilyn Berger went to Africa to write about Dr. Hodes, but while there, she became involved with the story. When she came upon a small, deformed, and malnourished boy begging on the street, she recognized immediately that he had the exact disease Rick could cure. She took him to Rick, who eventually arranged for the boy to have a complicated and risky surgery, which turned out to be incredibly successful. The boy's story—intertwined with Rick's, and Marilyn's as well—is unforgettable in its pathos and subtle humor. This Is a Soul is not just a story of the savior and the saved, it is a celebration of love and wisdom, and an exploration of how charity and devotion can actually change lives in an overcrowded, unjust, and often harsh world.
This is the Dream
by Jessica Alexander Diane Z. ShoreWhen they started, it was all just a dream. Through striking, powerful verse and gorgeous, detailed illustrations, this is the dream catalogs the American experience before, during, and after the civil rights movement.
This is the Life: Days and Nights in the GAA
by Ciarán MurphyA provocative look at how grassroots GAA interacts with life in Ireland, from the wittiest Gaelic games pundit at work today The GAA is Ireland's largest civil society organisation, woven into the fabric of families and communities - and yet most books about Gaelic games focus on the greatest players and inter-county teams. This is the Life is a book about the 99%: a witty and provocative look at grassroots GAA from the most intelligent and interesting Gaelic games pundit at work today.Ciarán Murphy - of Second Captains and the Irish Times - has an unmatched feel for the timeless elements of this world and a finger on the pulse of change. He looks at the plight of rural clubs that are losing their players to the cities - and he does so not only as a journalist but as a footballer who made the same move himself. He writes about working as an assistant in the clothing shop owned by the family of Jarlath Fallon - both Ciarán's sporting hero and the local postman. And he looks a things we usually prefer not to talk about, like the role of social class in the GAA.This is the Life is a book about the places the GAA comes from, the places it can take a person, and theings that make a local club worth fighting for.
This or Something Better: A Memoir of Resilience
by Elisa Stancil LevineWhen the Sonoma Complex fire came to Elisa Stancil Levine’s California doorstep in 2017, her world changed overnight. The devastating fire torched thousands of acres, but for Elisa, a world-class decorative artist, it was her reaction that night that cracked her wide open. A loving wife, mother, and grandmother, Elisa thought she had reckoned with her early childhood trauma. But when she fled the midnight firestorm without alerting a single neighbor, she had to ask herself: Who does that?In This or Something Better, Elisa revisits her past and the one force in which she has always found true kinship: the wild river. Nature, her lifelong ally, gave solace . Through teen pregnancy, her baby’s stillbirth, and a mystical near-death experience at eighteen, nature shaped her character, and it later informed her wildly successful career. But was there an unintended consequence?The fresh trauma of the firestorm sparked a quest: what treasure awaited if Elisa learned to trust human nature? Vivid, poetic, and intimate, This or Something Better reveals how true healing of deep wounds happens one exquisite layer at a time—and invites us each to consider and embrace our own path toward wholeness and authenticity.
Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life
by Michael NottA no-holds-barred biography of the great poet and sexual rebel, who could “give the dead a voice, make them sing” (Hilton Als, The New Yorker). Thom Gunn was not a confessional poet, and he withheld much, but inseparable from his rigorous, formal poetry was a ravenous, acute experience of life and death. Raised in Kent, England, and educated at Cambridge, Gunn found a home in San Francisco, where he documented the city’s queerness, the hippie mentality (and drug use) of the sixties, and the tragedy and catastrophic impact of the AIDS crisis in the eighties and beyond. As Jeremy Lybarger wrote in The New Republic, the author of Moly and The Man with Night Sweats was “an agile poet who renovated tradition to accommodate the rude litter of modernity.” Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life chronicles, for the first time, the largely undocumented life of this revolutionary poet. Michael Nott, a coeditor of The Letters of Thom Gunn, draws on letters, diaries, notebooks, interviews, and Gunn’s poetry to create a portrait as vital as the man himself. Nott writes with insight and intimacy about the great sweep of Gunn’s life: his traditional childhood in England; his mother’s suicide; the mind-opening education he received at Cambridge, reading Shakespeare and John Donne; his decades in San Francisco and with his life partner, Mike Kitay; and his visceral experience of sex, drugs, and loss. Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life is a long-awaited, landmark study of one of England and America’s most innovative poets.
Thomas A. Edison:Young Inventor (Childhood of Famous American Series)
by Sue GuthridgeA biography focusing on the childhood of the inventor who patented more than 1,000 inventions in sixty years, among them the electric light and the phonograph.
Thomas Adès: Conversations With Tom Service
by Tom Service Thomas AdèsComposer, conductor, and pianist, Thomas Adès is one of the most diversely talented musical figures of his generation. His music is performed by great opera companies, symphony orchestras, chamber groups, and music festivals throughout the world. But Adès has resisted public discussion of the creative process behind his musical compositions. Until now, the interior experience that has fired the spectrum of his work—from his first opera, Powder Her Face, to his masterpiece The Tempest and his acclaimed orchestral works Asyla and Tevot—has largely remained unexplained. Here, in spirited, intimate, and, at times, contentious conversations with the distinguished music critic Tom Service, Adès opens up about his work. "For Adès, whose literary and artistic sensibilities are nearly as refined and virtuosic as his musical instincts," writes Service, "inhabiting the different territory of words rather than notes offers a chance to search out new creative correspondences, to open doors—a phrase he often uses—into new ways of thinking in and about music."The phrase "full of noises," from Caliban's speech in The Tempest, refers both to the sounds "swirling around" Adès's head that are transmuted into music and to the vast array of his musical influences—from Sephardic folk music, to 1980s electronica, to Adès's passion for Beethoven and Janácek and his equally visceral dislike of Wagner. It also suggests "the creative friction" essential to any authentic dialogue. As readers of these "wilfully brilliant" conversations will quickly discover, Thomas Adès: Full of Noises brings us into the "revelatory kaleidoscope" of Adès's world.
Thomas Alva Edison (Rookie Biographies)
by Wil MaraAn introduction to the life of Thomas Alva Edison, whose many inventions included the phonograph and the light bulb.
Thomas Alva Edison: Inventing the Electric Age
by Gene AdairThomas Alva Edison revolutionized daily life as few people before or after him have done. The light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture--through these and countless other technological marvels Edison left his mark on the modern world. Although he had little formal education, Edison showed a remarkable talent for practical science by the time he became a teenager. He was in his early twenties when he launched his inventing career in Boston (and later in New York City). In 1867, he established the world's first industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, N. J. , and within six years, he and his assistants had developed a light-and-power system that amazed the world. Edison's inventions made him a millionaire, but money was always far less important to him than inventing itself. Even in his eighties, Edison stayed busy as he searched for a domestic source for rubber. When he died in 1931, the nation dimmed its lights in tribute.
Thomas And Jane Carlyle: Portrait of a Marriage
by Rosemary AshtonThey were the most remarkable couple in London: the great sage Carlyle, with his vehement prophecies, and his witty, sardonic wife Jane. It was a strong, close, mutually admiring yet often mutually antagonistic partnership, fascinating to all who observed it. The Carlyles lived at the heart of English life in mid-Victorian London, but both were outsiders, a largely self-educated Scottish pair who took a sometimes caustic look at the society they so influenced - Carlyle through his copious writings, and both through their network of acquaintances and correspondents. Carlyle's fame was confirmed by his Sartor Resartus of 1843, The French Revolution, his lectures on heroes and hero-worship and by his radical account of contemporary industrial Britain in Past and Present, 1843. Both husband and wife were great letter-writers, Carlyle commenting on the matters of the day, dashing off pen portraits of those he met and Jane with her brilliant stories and her sharp, dry humour. Yet despite her brilliance, Jane suffered, especially from Carlyle's infatuation with the lion-hunting Lady Ashburton, and the tensions in their marriage grew. The letters they wrote, both to each other and to others, make theirs the most well-documented marriage of the nineteenth century and give us an unequalled portrait of a famously unhappy marriage. This moving and vivid biography describes their relationship with each other, from their first meeting in 1821 to Jane's death in 1866, and also their relationship with the world outside. Rosemary Ashton's inimitable blend of rigorous scholarship, warm sensitivity and lively wit makes this not only a portrait of a marriage but a picture of a whole age, elegant, erudite and entertaining.
Thomas Aquinas
by Denys TurnerLeaving so few traces of himself behind, Thomas Aquinas seems to defy the efforts of the biographer. Highly visible as a public teacher, preacher, and theologian, he nevertheless has remained nearly invisible as man and saint. What can be discovered about Thomas Aquinas as a whole? In this short, compelling portrait, Denys Turner clears away the haze of time and brings Thomas vividly to life for contemporary readers--those unfamiliar with the saint as well as those well acquainted with his teachings.Building on the best biographical scholarship available today and reading the works of Thomas with piercing acuity, Turner seeks the point at which the man, the mind, and the soul of Thomas Aquinas intersect. Reflecting upon Thomas, a man of Christian Trinitarian faith yet one whose thought is grounded firmly in the body's interaction with the material world, a thinker at once confident in the powers of human reason and a man of prayer, Turner provides a more detailed human portrait than ever before of one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in all of Western thought.
Thomas Becket
by John GuyA revisionist new biography reintroducing readers to one of the most subversive figures in English history--the man who sought to reform a nation, dared to defy his king, and laid down his life to defend his sacred honor NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KANSAS CITY STAR AND BLOOMBERGBecket's life story has been often told but never so incisively reexamined and vividly rendered as it is in John Guy's hands. The son of middle-class Norman parents, Becket rose against all odds to become the second most powerful man in England. As King Henry II's chancellor, Becket charmed potentates and popes, tamed overmighty barons, and even personally led knights into battle. After his royal patron elevated him to archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, however, Becket clashed with the King. Forced to choose between fealty to the crown and the values of his faith, he repeatedly challenged Henry's authority to bring the church to heel. Drawing on the full panoply of medieval sources, Guy sheds new light on the relationship between the two men, separates truth from centuries of mythmaking, and casts doubt on the long-held assumption that the headstrong rivals were once close friends. He also provides the fullest accounting yet for Becket's seemingly radical transformation from worldly bureaucrat to devout man of God. Here is a Becket seldom glimpsed in any previous biography, a man of many facets and faces: the skilled warrior as comfortable unhorsing an opponent in single combat as he was negotiating terms of surrender; the canny diplomat "with the appetite of a wolf" who unexpectedly became the spiritual paragon of the English church; and the ascetic rebel who waged a high-stakes contest of wills with one of the most volcanic monarchs of the Middle Ages. Driven into exile, derided by his enemies as an ungrateful upstart, Becket returned to Canterbury in the unlikeliest guise of all: as an avenging angel of God, wielding his power of excommunication like a sword. It is this last apparition, the one for which history remembers him best, that will lead to his martyrdom at the hands of the king's minions--a grisly episode that Guy recounts in chilling and dramatic detail. An uncommonly intimate portrait of one of the medieval world's most magnetic figures, Thomas Becket breathes new life into its subject--cementing for all time his place as an enduring icon of resistance to the abuse of power.From the Hardcover edition.
Thomas Berry: A Biography (G - Reference, Information And Interdisciplinary Subjects)
by Mary Evelyn Tucker John Grim Andrew AngyalThomas Berry (1914–2009) was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient and profound thinkers. As a cultural historian, he sought a broader perspective on humanity’s relationship to the earth in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of our times. This first biography of Berry illuminates his remarkable vision and its continuing relevance for achieving transformative social change and environmental renewal.Berry began his studies in Western history and religions and then expanded to include Asian and indigenous religions, which he taught at Fordham University, Barnard College, and Columbia University. Drawing on his explorations of history, he came to see the evolutionary process as a story that could help restore the continuity of humans with the natural world. Berry urged humans to recognize their place on a planet with complex ecosystems in a vast, evolving universe. He sought to replace the modern alienation from nature with a sense of intimacy and responsibility. Berry called for new forms of ecological education, law, and spirituality, as well as the creation of resilient agricultural systems, bioregions, and ecocities. At a time of growing environmental crisis, this biography shows the ongoing significance of Berry’s conception of human interdependence with the earth as part of the unfolding journey of the universe.