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The Common Cause: Postcolonial Ethics and the Practice of Democracy, 1900 to 1955
by Leela GandhiEuropeans and Americans tend to hold the opinion that democracy is a uniquely Western inheritance, but in The Common Cause, Leela Gandhi recovers stories of an alternate version, describing a transnational history of democracy in the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of ethics in the broad sense of disciplined self-fashioning. Gandhi identifies a shared culture of perfectionism across imperialism, fascism, and liberalism—an ethic that excluded the ordinary and unexceptional. But, she also illuminates an ethic of moral imperfectionism, a set of anticolonial, antifascist practices devoted to ordinariness and abnegation that ranged from doomed mutinies in the Indian military to Mahatma Gandhi’s spiritual discipline. Reframing the way we think about some of the most consequential political events of the era, Gandhi presents moral imperfectionism as the lost tradition of global democratic thought and offers it to us as a key to democracy’s future. In doing so, she defends democracy as a shared art of living on the other side of perfection and mounts a postcolonial appeal for an ethics of becoming common.
Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond
by Theodore Levin Valentina SüzükeiTheodore Levin takes readers on a journey through the rich sonic world of inner Asia, where the elemental energies of wind, water, and echo; the ubiquitous presence of birds and animals; and the legendary feats of heroes have inspired a remarkable art and technology of sound-making among nomadic pastoralists. As performers from Tuva and other parts of inner Asia have responded to the growing worldwide popularity of their music, Levin follows them to the West, detailing their efforts to nourish global connections while preserving the power and poignancy of their music traditions.
Anybody Any Minute: A Novel
by Julie MarsEllen Kenny has a big mouth and a penchant for telling the truth, which is why she's just been fired from yet another high-profile NYC job. Determined to make the most of this unexpected free time, she heads to Montreal to visit her sister. On the way, she spots a tumbledown upstate farmhouse---one she's seen in her dreams for years---and impulsively buys it on a hefty credit card advance. Over her husband's protests, Ellen decides to drop out of the rat race and spend the summer living out her woman-who-runs-with-the wolves fantasy, communing with nature---her own included---in an effort to confront middle age and figure out how on earth she got there. Rather than peacefully tend her garden and puzzle things out, however, Ellen soon becomes embroiled in the exceedingly unique problems of two redneck, social misfit neighbors---an ex-biker and an aging chainsaw sculptor---while taking care of a narcoleptic dog and a child who doesn't speak English. With Ellen's quest for meaning and her concern for the welfare of others driving the plot, Anybody Any Minute is deeply layered, heartbreaking . . . and hilarious.
Politics, Money, and Persuasion: Democracy and Opinion in Plato's Republic (Studies in Continental Thought)
by John RussonIn Politics, Money, and Persuasion, distinguished philosopher John Russon offers a new framework for interpreting Plato's The Republic. For Russon, Plato's work is about the distinctive nature of what it is to be a human being and, correspondingly, what is distinctive about the nature of human society. Russon focuses on the realities of our everyday experience to come to profoundly insightful assessments of our human realities: the nature of the city, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of human psychology. Russon's argument concentrates on the ambivalence of logos, which includes reflections on politics and philosophy and their place in human life, how humans have shaped the environment, our interactions with money, the economy, and the pursuit of the good in social and political systems. Politics, Money, and Persuasion offers a deeply personal but also practical kind of philosophical reading of Plato's classic text. It emphasizes the tight connection between the life of city and the life of the soul, demonstrating both the crucial role that human cognitive excellence and psychological health play in political and social life.
The Education of Lieutenant Kerrey
by Gregory L. VisticaThe Education of Lieutenant Kerrey is an incredible story and a modern morality tale about a man of compassion and promise trapped by a horrible secret.On the night of February 25, 1969, an inexperienced, 25-year-old lieutenant, Bob Kerrey, led a commando raid on an isolated hamlet called Thanh Phong in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. While witnesses and official records give varying accounts, one thing is certain: around midnight, Kerrey and his men killed nearly two dozen unarmed women and children. What happened that night and why? It's a terrible secret that Kerrey has borne for more than thirty years. Kerrey went on to do heroic things in Vietnam and later as a politician. Since World War II, he is only Medal of Honor winner to sit as a member of Congress. In many ways, Kerrey's life following that tragic mission has been a struggle for redemption.So is Bob Kerrey a war hero or war criminal? Gregory L. Vistica, who uncovered the Thanh Phong atrocities in a widely-praised cover story for The New York Times Magazine, searches the entire span of Kerrey's life to answer that question.. From his rural boyhood in Nebraska, to his gut wrenching Navy SEAL training, to his aborted run for President, Kerrey's life will become a vehicle for understanding the Vietnam generation shaped in the 50s and sharpened by the tumultuous 60s.
The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy
by Robert LeleuxIn the Dear John letter Daddy left for Mother and me, on a Saturday afternoon in early June 1996, on the inlaid Florentine table in the front entry of our house, which we found that night upon returning from a day spent in the crème-colored light of Neiman's, Daddy wrote that he was leaving us because Mother was crazy, and because she'd driven me crazy in a way that perfectly suited her own insanity.In a memoir studded with delicious lines and unforgettable set pieces, Robert Leleux describes his East Texas boyhood and coming of age under the tutelage of his eccentric, bewigged, flamboyant, and knowing mother.Left high and dry by Daddy and living on their in-laws' horse ranch in a white-pillared house they can't afford, Robert and Mother find themselves chronically low on cash. Soon they are forced into more modest quarters, and as a teenaged Robert watches with hilarity and horror, Mother begins a desperate regimen of makeovers, extreme plastic surgeries, and finally hairpiece epoxies---all calculated to secure a new, wealthy husband. Mother's strategy takes her, with Robert in tow, from the glamorous environs of the Neiman Marcus beauty salon to questionable surgery offices and finally to a storefront clinic on the wrong side of Houston. Meanwhile, Robert begins his own journey away from Mother and through the local theater's world of miscast hopefuls and thwarted ambitions---and into a romance that surprises absolutely no one but himself. Written with a warmth and a wicked sense of fun that lighten even the most awful circumstances, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy is a sparkling debut.
Start-Up Poland: The People Who Transformed an Economy
by Jan CienskiPoland in the 1980s was filled with shuttered restaurants and shops that bore such imaginative names as “bread,” “shoes,” and “milk products,” from which lines could stretch for days on the mere rumor there was something worth buying. But you’d be hard-pressed to recognize the same squares—buzzing with bars and cafés—today. In the years since the collapse of communism, Poland’s GDP has almost tripled, making it the eighth-largest economy in the European Union, with a wealth of well-educated and highly skilled workers and a buoyant private sector that competes in international markets. Many consider it one of the only European countries to have truly weathered the financial crisis. As the Warsaw bureau chief for the Financial Times, Jan Cienski spent more than a decade talking with the people who did something that had never been done before: recreating a market economy out of a socialist one. Poland had always lagged behind wealthier Western Europe, but in the 1980s the gap had grown to its widest in centuries. But the corrupt Polish version of communism also created the conditions for its eventual revitalization, bringing forth a remarkably resilient and entrepreneurial people prepared to brave red tape and limited access to capital. In the 1990s, more than a million Polish people opened their own businesses, selling everything from bicycles to leather jackets, Japanese VCRs, and romance novels. The most business-savvy turned those primitive operations into complex corporations that now have global reach. Well researched and accessibly and entertainingly written, Start-Up Poland tells the story of the opening bell in the East, painting lively portraits of the men and women who built successful businesses there, what their lives were like, and what they did to catapult their ideas to incredible success. At a time when Poland’s new right-wing government plays on past grievances and forms part of the populist and nationalist revolution sweeping the Western world, Cienski’s book also serves as a reminder that the past century has been the most successful in Poland’s history.
Climate and the Making of Worlds: Toward a Geohistorical Poetics
by Tobias MenelyWinner of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize and the Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies Warren-Brooks Award. In this book, Tobias Menely develops a materialist ecocriticism, tracking the imprint of the planetary across a long literary history of poetic rewritings and critical readings which continually engage with the climate as a condition of human world making. Menely’s central archive is English poetry written between John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Charlotte Smith’s “Beachy Head” (1807)—a momentous century and a half during which Britain, emerging from a crisis intensified by the Little Ice Age, established the largest empire in world history and instigated the Industrial Revolution. Incorporating new sciences into ancient literary genres, these ambitious poems aspired to encompass what the eighteenth-century author James Thomson called the “system . . . entire.” Thus they offer a unique record of geohistory, Britain’s epochal transition from an agrarian society, buffeted by climate shocks, to a modern coal-powered nation. Climate and the Making of Worlds is a bracing and sophisticated contribution to ecocriticism, the energy humanities, and the prehistory of the Anthropocene.
The Common Thread: Mothers and Daughters: The Bond We Never Outgrow
by Martha ManningNo relationship is more fulfilling, infuriating, emotional, and problematic than that of mother and daughter. Now, in a work filled with truth, surprises, and humor, renowned psychologist and author Martha Manning offers mothers and daughters of all ages a new way to understand each other. Challenging the accepted premise that this powerful bond must be severed for emotional growth, Manning shows us why this precious attachment is never outgrown, how, if it is damaged, it can be healed, and what will enrich this lifelong commitment while fostering essential independence. The key is empathy, and Manning provides potent tools to help us build stronger ties and celebrate the crazy twists, joys, and secrets inherent in this most glorious of life connections.Combining personal experiences and scrupulous research, The Common Thread helps each of us develop a mutually empowering relationship -- and laugh, too -- as we more deeply connect with and appreciate the mother or daughter we love.
Figuring Jerusalem: Politics and Poetics in the Sacred Center
by Sidra DeKoven EzrahiFiguring Jerusalem explores how Hebrew writers have imagined Jerusalem, both from the distance of exile and from within its sacred walls. For two thousand years, Hebrew writers used their exile from the Holy Land as a license for invention. The question at the heart of Figuring Jerusalem is this: how did these writers bring their imagination “home” in the Zionist century? Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi finds that the same diasporic conventions that Hebrew writers practiced in exile were maintained throughout the first half of the twentieth century. And even after 1948, when the state of Israel was founded but East Jerusalem and its holy sites remained under Arab control, Jerusalem continued to figure in the Hebrew imagination as mediated space. It was only in the aftermath of the Six Day War that the temptations and dilemmas of proximity to the sacred would become acute in every area of Hebrew politics and culture.Figuring Jerusalem ranges from classical texts, biblical and medieval, to the post-1967 writings of S. Y. Agnon and Yehuda Amichai. Ultimately, DeKoven Ezrahi shows that the wisdom Jews acquired through two thousand years of exile, as inscribed in their literary imagination, must be rediscovered if the diverse inhabitants of Jerusalem are to coexist.
The Looking Glass Brother: The Preposterous, Moving, Hilarious, And Frequently Terrifying Story Of My Gilded Age Long Island Family, My Philandering Father, And The Homeless Stepbrother Who Shares My Name
by Peter von ZiegesarPeter von Ziegesar had just moved to New York and was awaiting the birth of his first child when a dark shape stepped from the looking glass of his past on to a Greenwich Village street. The Looking Glass Brother is Peter von Ziegesar's remarkable memoir of a life that began in the exquisite enclaves of Long Island's gilded age families and is now lived, in part, as the keeper of his homeless and schizophrenic stepbrother, Little Peter. The Looking Glass Brother is a feast of memories from one of the last, great estates on Long Island's Peacock Point. Summers were filled with the glistening water of the Long Island Sound, pristine beaches, croquet games, butlers in formal wear serving dinners and an endless stream of cocktails. When, after a string of affairs Peter's father left his mother and remarried, the idyll was broken and several stepchildren, including Little Peter, entered von Ziegesar's life from the looking glass of his father's new family. Little Peter was an angelic and brilliant young boy who spiraled down during adolescence to become one more homeless man living on the street. In this big-hearted memoir, Peter von Ziegesar mixes memories of life on Peacock Point with the turbulent joys of fatherhood and the responsibility he feels for his brother, a man with the same name as his, but a man who lives a desperate and very different life.
the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Cambridge Library Collection - Darwin, Evolution And Genetics Ser.)
by Charles DarwinDarwin's work of 1872 still provides the point of departure for research in the theory of emotion and expression. Although he lacked the modern research tool of cybernetics, his basic methods have not been improved upon: the study of infants, of the insane, of paintings and sculpture, of some of the commoner animals; the use of photographs of expression submitted to different judges; and the comparative study of expression among different peoples. This new edition will be warmly welcomed by those behavioral scientists who have recently shown an intense interest in the scientific study of expression. Lay readers, too, will be struck by the freshness and directness of this book, which includes, among other data, Darwin's delightfully objective analysis of his own baby's smiles and pouts.
Full Circle (The Alan Bernhardt Novels #5)
by Collin WilcoxA dying art collector asks Bernhardt to revisit him in his darkest hourThe first time Betty Giles went missing, her employers wanted her dead. They hired Alan Bernhardt, theater director and sometimes PI, to find her, but when he discovered their scheme, he drew a sawed-off shotgun to save her life. Now Betty&’s missing again, hiding somewhere in Europe, and her old bosses want her found. Will Bernhardt deliver her to the man who once tried to have her killed?It certainly isn&’t easy to refuse Raymond DuBois, a billionaire art collector who insists his feud with Betty was nothing but an innocent misunderstanding. He&’s dying, and promises he can clear her name if Alan can only locate her. The case seems like a trap, but the director has one thing working for him. Unlike last time, he knows that trusting anyone could be suicide.
Values and Music Education (Counterpoints: Music and Education)
by Estelle R. JorgensenWhat values should form the foundation of music education? And once we decide on those values, how do we ensure we are acting on them?In Values and Music Education, esteemed author Estelle R. Jorgensen explores how values apply to the practice of music education. We may declare values, but they can be hard to see in action. Jorgensen examines nine quartets of related values and offers readers a roadmap for thinking constructively and critically about the values they hold. In doing so, she takes a broad view of both music and education while drawing on a wide sweep of multidisciplinary literature. Not only does Jorgensen demonstrate an analytical and dialectical philosophical approach to examining values, but she also seeks to show how theoretical and practical issues are interconnected.An important addition to the field of music education, Values and Music Education highlights values that have been forgotten or marginalized, underscores those that seem perennial, and illustrates how values can be double-edged swords.
Darfur Allegory
by Rogaia Mustafa AbusarafThe Darfur conflict exploded in early 2003 when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, struck national military installations in Darfur to send a hard-hitting message of resentment over the region’s political and economic marginalization. The conflict devastated the region’s economy, shredded its fragile social fabric, and drove millions of people from their homes. Darfur Allegory is a dispatch from the humanitarian crisis that explains the historical and ethnographic background to competing narratives that have informed international responses. At the heart of the book is Sudanese anthropologist Rogaia Abusharaf’s critique of the pseudoscientific notions of race and ethnicity that posit divisions between “Arab” northerners and “African” Darfuris. Elaborated in colonial times and enshrined in policy afterwards, such binary categories have been adopted by the media to explain the civil war in Darfur. The narratives that circulate internationally are thus highly fraught and cover over—to counterproductive effect—forms of Darfurian activism that have emerged in the conflict’s wake. Darfur Allegory marries the analytical precision of a committed anthropologist with an insider’s view of Sudanese politics at home and in the diaspora, laying bare the power of words to heal or perpetuate civil conflict.
The Damnation of Theron Ware: Or, Illumination (Belt Revivals)
by Harold FredericThis nineteenth-century classic about the fall of a Methodist minister is &“of great interest both as a novel and as a double-barrelled social document&” (Manchester Guardian).The Damnation of Theron Ware is the story of a young pastor who comes to a small town in the Adirondacks to spread the gospel. Once he gets there, his congregation slowly leads him down a path of secular enlightenment, encouraging him to question the very same scripture he has devoted his life to. Through new friends, he has encounters beautiful art and music and gains new insights into the world of Darwinian science. But when he finds himself carried away by these fresh new experiences, where they lead him is not at all what he expected. A forerunner of the classic naturalistic novels of the early twentieth century, Harold Frederic&’s work is considered one of the great American novels of his time. &“Containing the realism of Howells, the moral complexity of James, and the comic manner of Mark Twain, the novel—a finer book, incidentally, than Lewis&’s Elmer Gantry—warrants reading.&” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch &“The combination of delicate mannerliness and merciless savagery with which Frederic sets about abasing Theron is not easy to describe; but, if one could make the admittedly prodigious effort of imagining an Emma written from the point of view of Mr. Elton by an ebullient exile from Utica, New York . . . some idea of its shocking comprehensivity might be grasped.&” —Times Literary Supplement
Ambivalence, a Love Story: Portrait of a Marriage
by John DonatichAmbivalence, a Love Story is a deeply nuanced accounting in which two people come together to make a marriage work. Rarely has marriage and its compromises been so intimately portrayed, especially when tested by depression, unemployment, miscarriage and other realities of contemporary life. Whether inside the sterile out-placement offices for reengineered executives or traipsing through the suburban homes and competing lifestyles with perky realtors, Donatich muses on life's transitions with rare candor and insight. Ambivalence traces the inner life of a man coming into adulthood: on being first generation, on interfaith marriage, on playing the accordion and ultimately on the question of whether we are better off solitary or coupled. But at heart, it is a tender -- if circumspect -- love story. An astonishing middle-aged debut.
Eight Weeks in Washington, 1861: Abraham Lincoln and the Hazards of Transition
by Richard J. TofelA close look at the first eight weeks after Abraham Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, reveals a time when the fate of the nation's capital, certainly of the Lincoln Administration, and perhaps of the nation itself, seemed very much in doubt.This is a story of a president uncertain and sometimes amateurish, of a man not yet fully recognized as a legitimate leader, of an executive anxious to the point of illness, of a beleaguered figure, occasionally despairing, but also starting to find his footing. Lincoln himself soon remembered it as the most troubled and anxious time of his life, one that might actually have threatened his physical survival. In a sense, it is a story of Abraham Lincoln the human being beginning to become the Abraham Lincoln we now recall.
3 Fat Chicks on a Diet: Because We're All In It Together
by Suzanne Barnett Jennifer Barnett Amy Barnett Bev WestFilled with the sassy attitude and sage advice of three lovable sisters from the South who have been fighting the battle of the bulge for most of their lives, 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet tells everyone who has ever wanted to lose a few pounds how to find dieting success. Because every dieter will try most of the popular diets at some point in a weight-loss struggle, the sisters give you the real scoop—as well as anecdotes and wisdom from scores of their online community of women—on the favorites, from South Beach to the Mediterranean Diet, Atkins to the Zone, and celebrity-driven weight-loss programs to Ediets. You'll get so much more than just coffee-klatch gossip:* The pros and cons of each diet* Guilt-free ways to snack and still stay with the program* Straight talk for making the diets work for every meal of the day* Menu suggestions when dining out* Delicious recipes to try at home* And much more!Best of all, the book offers a fool-proof support system of love and encouragement from women just like you who are trying to win the war with their waistlines.Just when you think you're bogged down by calorie counting, the 3 Fat Chicks diet community takes you on a humorous romp through their battles with everything from slimming slippers and fat-away soap to cabbage soup and grapefruit diets. Get the real-world facts that you need to embark on your personal journey to change your weight and your life.
Girls in the Grass: Stories
by Melanie Rae ThonWinner of a 1997 Whiting Writers' Award One of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists"Ranging across a uniquely American landscape, from rural Idaho and suburban Arizona to downtown Boston, the eleven stories in Melanie Rae Thon's eagerly awaited reissued collection, Girls in the Grass, explore with painful lyricism the harsh awakenings of adolescence: eroticism and hypocrisy, love and violence, responsibility and guilt, adult inconstancy and the random cruelty of life and death.
Indiana Winter
by Susan Neville"Neville's observations on inner and outer worlds deserve a large readership." —Studies in Short Fiction"Blending fictional and reportorial technique, Ms. Neville unwinds a tapestry of the Indiana seasons . . . in scene after remarkable scene she succeeds in disturbing and undermining one's calm. . . . moving . . . " —Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times" . . . shrewedly perceptive studies of the poetics of place . . . Neville pierces the heart of this 'heart of the country,' unloosing disquieting images and poignant scenes that cling to your memory." —Belles Lettres"If there is darkness in this vision there is also compassion, a lucid and inclusive civility born of remembering how fragile are the houses of our lives." —Arts Indiana"A collection of essays, works of fiction and blends of those two genres, Indiana Winter is a poetic and disturbing interpretation of phenomena familiar to most of Neville's fellow Hoosiers—so familiar, in fact, that we may not really see them. . . . As a plunge into the blackness and glare of the examined life, Indiana Winter is a testament to courage." —Dan Carpenter, Indianapolis Star"These stories and essays are filled with great emotion and affection for the people and the land we've come to know as the Hoosier state." —Minneapolis Star Tribune" . . . a book that is firmly and honestly rooted in region, yet finds in its careful and lyrical examination of Indiana's people and places truths that move the prose pieces away from simple regionalism." —Sycamore ReviewA sensitive writer's imaginative essay-stories about spiritual boundaries and values in the state of Indiana and everywhere.
The Saberdene Variations
by Thomas GiffordA powerful lawyer&’s most famous opponent comes back to kill himOn his first day at Harvard, working-class student Charlie Nichols is instantly charmed by the debonair rake Victor Saberdene. While Nichols earns tuition playing football, Saberdene&’s wealth and charm rocket him to the top of Harvard&’s impenetrable social pyramid and beyond—to become the most feared defense lawyer in the country, a man who uses his charisma to manipulate juries. Nichols becomes an international crime reporter. He hasn&’t thought of his old friend Saberdene in years when he reads of the Anna Thorne killing. A beautiful young Massachusetts stagehand disappears after a fling with the handsome, dangerous Carl Varada—who might have escaped had Anna not been Saberdene&’s sister-in-law. Saberdene puts Varada behind bars, but years later the killer earns early release. When Varada sets his sights on the great lawyer&’s family, no amount of charisma can stop him.
The Sex Education Debates
by Nancy KendallEducating children and adolescents in public schools about sex is a deeply inflammatory act in the United States. Since the 1980s, intense political and cultural battles have been waged between believers in abstinence until marriage and advocates for comprehensive sex education. In The Sex Education Debates, Nancy Kendall upends conventional thinking about these battles by bringing the school and community realities of sex education to life through the diverse voices of students, teachers, administrators, and activists. Drawing on ethnographic research in five states, Kendall reveals important differences and surprising commonalities shared by purported antagonists in the sex education wars, and she illuminates the unintended consequences these protracted battles have, especially on teachers and students. Showing that the lessons that most students, teachers, and parents take away from these battles are antithetical to the long-term health of American democracy, she argues for shifting the measure of sex education success away from pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates. Instead, she argues, the debates should focus on a broader set of social and democratic consequences, such as what students learn about themselves as sexual beings and civic actors, and how sex education programming affects school-community relations.
The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood
by Joel B. AltmanShakespeare’s dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare’s theater.Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare’s representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman’s account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences’ probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America’s most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare’s conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.
Life at These Speeds: A Novel
by Jeremy JacksonThe Sweet Hereafter meets Chariots of Fire in Life at These Speeds, the touching first novel from Jeremy Jackson about tragedy and healing. The basis for the major motion picture 1 Mile to You. "Refreshing...Reminds us that whether we run, play football, sing or write, we need to find the joy in what we do."—Chicago Sun-Times In eighth grade Kevin Schuler is a popular kid with a decent, if not stellar, record on the track. Yet after fate takes him off a bus that crashes and kills his fellow students, including his girlfriend, Kevin inexplicably becomes a track phenomenon. Separated from his memory and distanced from his own life, he effortlessly smashes records and gains national attention, until he finds that he can no more remain apart from himself than he can from the ground beneath his feet.