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The Invention of Robert Bresson: The Auteur and His Market
by Colin BurnettChallenging the prevailing notion among cinephiles that the auteur is an isolated genius interested primarily in individualism, Colin Burnett positions Robert Bresson as one whose life's work confronts the cultural forces that helped shape it. Regarded as one of film history's most elusive figures, Bresson (1901–1999) carried himself as an auteur long before cultural magazines, like the famed Cahiers du cinéma, advanced the term to describe such directors as Jacques Tati, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jean-Luc Godard. In this groundbreaking study, Burnett combines biography with cultural history to uncover the roots of the auteur in the alternative cultural marketplace of midcentury France.
Head in the Game: The Mental Engineering of the World's Greatest Athletes
by Brandon SneedAn intriguing blend of science and sports that explores how some of the worlds greatest athletes are utilizing the last frontier of performance-enhancing technology—the mental mapping and engineering of their own brains—for peak performance, and what it means for the future of athleticism, sports, and the rest of us.Moneyball showed how statistics were revolutionizing baseball. The Sports Gene revealed the role genetics play in sports. Now, Head in the Game examines the next evolution: how mental engineering—the manipulation of the cognitive processes of the brain—can make gifted athletes even better. For years, technology—from EEG (electroencephalogram) to fMRI (Functional magnetic resonance imaging) to video games, tablets, and personal data collection devices—have been used with soldiers to understand their physical and mental functioning. Touching on brain functionality vital to sports—both the "hard" (coordination, stimuli processing, functional memory, decision-making, load-processing) and the "soft" (emotion regulation, visualization, psychology, mindfulness)—this tech is now being adopted by scores of championship franchises and top athletes—including scrappy underdogs forced to innovate and elite players looking for an advantage. Star NFL quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Tom Brady, the NBA’s Kyle Korver, and Olympic volleyball champion Kerri Walsh are using mental engineering to up their game. It’s not luck that has transformed the San Antonio Spurs into a formidable force—it’s science, Sneed demonstrates. As mental engineering becomes widespread—taking athletes who are already freaks of nature and making them better—the impact on the multi-billion dollar sports industry will be dramatic on players, managers, trainers, owners, and even fans. Interviewing athletes and coaches, visiting training camps and sports science firms, Brandon Sneed offers a firsthand, on-the-ground look at this exciting breakthrough that has the potential to transform to transform the game—and all our lives.
Literature after Feminism
by Rita FelskiRecent commentators have portrayed feminist critics as grim-faced ideologues who are destroying the study of literature. Feminists, they claim, reduce art to politics and are hostile to any form of aesthetic pleasure. Literature after Feminism is the first work to comprehensively rebut such caricatures, while also offering a clear-eyed assessment of the relative merits of various feminist approaches to literature. Spelling out her main arguments clearly and succinctly, Rita Felski explains how feminism has changed the ways people read and think about literature. She organizes her book around four key questions: Do women and men read differently? How have feminist critics imagined the female author? What does plot have to do with gender? And what do feminists have to say about the relationship between literary and political value? Interweaving incisive commentary with literary examples, Felski advocates a double critical vision that can do justice to the social and political meanings of literature without dismissing or scanting the aesthetic.
Faith at War: A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, from Baghdad to Timbuktu
by Yaroslav TrofimovAn eye-opening political travelogue that reveals the Muslim world as never beforeDrawing on reporting from more than a dozen Islamic countries, Faith at War offers an unforgettable portrait of the Muslim world after September 11. Choosing to invert the question of what "they" have done to "us," Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov examines the unprecedented American intrusion in the Muslim heartland and the ripples it has caused far beyond the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. What emerges is a penetrating portrait of people, faith, and countries better known in caricature than reported detail. The ordinary Muslims, influential clerics, warlords, jihadis, intellectuals and heads of state we meet are engaged in conversations that reveal the Muslim world to us from a new, unexpected perspective.In Mali, one of the most successful democracies in Africa, we encounter Ousmane Madani Haidara, an influential cleric who sees Wahhabi extremists, rather than his country's secular government, as the real enemy of the true faith. In Saudi Arabia, we explore the bizarre world of exporting dead bodies from a kingdom that bars the burial of non-Muslims. On a US Navy aircraft carrier floating just off the coast of Pakistan in October 2001, we witness the mechanics of war: the onboard assembly of bombs that, hours later, are seen on T.V. exploding in Kabul. And in Iraq, we accompany Trofimov as he negotiates his escape from an insurgent mob, rides in a Humvee with trigger-happy GIs, and gets lectured by a Shiite holy man on why America is the foe of mankind.Whether exploring the badlands of the Sahara or a snow-covered village of Bosnian mujahedeen, Faith at War helps us understand the hidden relationships and often surprising connections, so crucial to America's future, that link the Islamic world to our own.
End of the Road: A Novel
by LS HawkerGreat minds can change the worldor leave it in ruins . . .When tech prodigy Jade Veverka creates a program to communicate with her autistic sister, she’s tapped by a startup to explore the potential applications of her technology. But Jade quickly begins to notice some strange things about the small Kansas town just beyond the company’s campus—why are there no children anywhere to be seen, and for that matter, anyone over the age of forty? Why do all of the people living here act uncomfortable and jumpy?On the way home one night, Jade and her co-worker are run off the road, and their lab and living spaces are suddenly overrun with armed guards, purportedly for their safety. Confined to the compound and questioning what her employers might be hiding from her, Jade fears she’s losing control not only of her invention, but of her very life. It soon becomes clear that the threat reaches far beyond Jade and her family, and the real danger is much closer than she’d ever imagined.
Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction
by Suzanne Jill LevineManuel Puig & The Spider Woman tells the life story of the innovative and flamboyant novelist and playwright himself. Suzanne Jill Levine, his principal English translator, draws upon years of friendship as well as copious research and interviews in her remarkable book, the first biography of the inimitable writer. Manuel Puig (1932-1990), Argentinian author of Kiss of the Spider Woman and pioneer of high camp, stands alone in the pantheon of contemporary Latin American literature. Strongly influenced by Hollywood films of the thirties and forties, his many-layered novels and plays integrate serious fiction and popular culture, mixing political and sexual themes with B-movie scenarios. When his first two novels were published in the late 1960s, they delighted the public but were dismissed as frivolous by the leftist intellectuals of the Boom; his third novel was banned by the Peronist government for irreverence. His influence was already felt, though-even by writers who had dismissed him-and by the time the film version of Kiss of the Spider Woman became a worldwide hit, he was a renowned literary figure.Puig's way of life was as unconventional as his fiction: he spoke of himself in the female form in Spanish, renamed his friends for his favorite movie stars, referred to his young male devotees as "daughters," and, as a perennial expatriate, lived (often with his mother) everywhere from Rome to Rio de Janeiro.
Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity
by Sam MillerA provocative portrait of one of the world's largest cities, delving behind the tourist facade to illustrate the people and places beyond the realms of the conventional travelogueSam Miller set out to discover the real Delhi, a city he describes as "India's dreamtown—and its purgatory." He treads the city streets, making his way through the city and its suburbs, visiting its less celebrated destinations—Nehru Place, Rohini, Ghazipur, and Gurgaon—which most writers and travelers ignore. His quest is the here and now, the unexpected, the overlooked, and the eccentric. All the obvious ports of call make appearances: the ancient monuments, the imperial buildings, and the celebrities of modern Delhi. But it is through his encounters with Delhi's people—from a professor of astrophysics to a crematorium attendant, from ragpickers to members of a police brass band—that Miller creates this richly entertaining portrait of what Delhi means to its residents, and of what the city is becoming. Miller, like so many of the people he meets, is a migrant in one of the world's fastest growing megapolises, and the Delhi he depicts is one whose future concerns us all. He possesses an intense curiosity; he has an infallible eye for life's diversities, for all the marvelous and sublime moments that illuminate people's lives. This is a generous, original, humorous portrait of a great city; one that unerringly locates the humanity beneath the mundane, the unsung, and the unfamiliar.
History's Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the Historical Enterprise in the United States, 1880–1940
by Robert B. TownsendFrom the late nineteenth century until World War II, competing spheres of professional identity and practice redrew the field of history, establishing fundamental differences between the roles of university historians, archivists, staff at historical societies, history teachers, and others. In History’s Babel, Robert B. Townsend takes us from the beginning of this professional shift—when the work of history included not just original research, but also teaching and the gathering of historical materials—to a state of microprofessionalization that continues to define the field today. Drawing on extensive research among the records of the American Historical Association and a multitude of other sources, Townsend traces the slow fragmentation of the field from 1880 to the divisions of the 1940s manifest today in the diverse professions of academia, teaching, and public history. By revealing how the founders of the contemporary historical enterprise envisioned the future of the discipline, he offers insight into our own historical moment and the way the discipline has adapted and changed over time. Townsend’s work will be of interest not only to historians but to all who care about how the professions of history emerged, how they might go forward, and the public role they still can play.
Women in the Dark: Female Photographers in the US 1850–1900
by Katherine ManthorneBrings to light the hidden histories of two generations of women photographers in 19th-century AmericaFor all interested in photographic, 19th-century American, and women's historyIncludes stories of amazing ingenuity, including using a skirt as a &“portable darkroom&”
Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings
by Vita Sackville-WestAristocrat, novelist, essayist, traveler, and lover of Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West lived a fascinating and daring life on the periphery of the Bloomsbury circle. She wrote in an astounding variety of genres, including travel narrative, historical and literary studies, poetry, fiction, and essays, and is probably best known or her novels, The Edwardians and All Passion Spent, and incomparable writings about English country houses and gardens. Here, for the first time, is an anthology that represents the full expanse of her interests and styles. Over half of the works, including intimate diaries and a dream notebook, have never been published. Edited by a foremost expert on the Bloomsbury circle, Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings provides the best and most accessible introduction to this unique writer.
America's Game: The NFL at 100
by Jerry Rice Randy O. WilliamsA celebration of 100 years of the NFL from Hall of Fame receiver and bestselling author Jerry Rice!“This book is an amazing compilation of the game’s history as seen through the eyes of my friend Jerry Rice, aka The GOAT. You are going to love this book almost as much as you loved watching Jerry play!” —Barry Sanders, NFL Hall of Fame Class of 2004The authors of the New York Times bestseller 50 Years, 50 Moments celebrate the first 100 years of the National Football League, interweaving history, personal stories, memories, and observations of some of its greatest players, coaches, and advocates to chronicle football’s amazing evolution from a fledgling regional fly-by-night operation into a multi-billion global brand and one of America’s leading franchises.Over the past century, professional football has transformed from a game played in leather helmets on cow pastures to one of the most high-tech, popular sports on the planet. In this entertaining and concise history, Jerry Rice and Randy O. Williams celebrate the NFL’s centennial, bringing together colorful memories, insights, and personal experiences and observations from the heroes, losers, innovators, and defining legends who have played the game at its highest level. America's Game is filled with inside stories of the league’s fiercest rivalries, closest competitions, and most memorable characters, from the early days of Red “The Galloping Ghost” Grange and “Slingin’” Sammy Baugh to Jim Brown and “Broadway” Joe Namath to Lawrence Taylor, Jerry Rice, and Tom Brady.Cowboy fans will never forget how Roger Staubach’s Hail Mary lifted his team to a last-second playoff victory over the Vikings. Patriot followers will always point to The Tuck Rule Game as a franchise landmark where Adam Vinatieri’s two clutch kicks in deep snow propelled his team to victory over the Raiders. Generations of Steelers fans will celebrate James Harrison’s electrifying 100–yard interception return for a touchdown in Super Bowl XLIII. All are among the most memorable moments in NFL history. Divided by increments of twenty-five years, each section of America's Game includes the authors’ selections for their “All Star” players and teams.America's Game is a unique tribute to this enduring cultural phenomenon, and will become the authoritative tribute to all that is great about the sport Americans—and the world—loves.
Kickflip Boys: A Memoir of Freedom, Rebellion, and the Chaos of Fatherhood
by Neal Thompson“Thompson captures the ache, fizz, yearning and frustration of being the father of adolescent boys.” —Michael Chabon“What a riveting, touching, and painful read!” —Maria Semple“Fun, moving, raw, and relatable.” —Tony HawkWhat makes a good father, and what makes one a failure? Does less-is-more parenting inspire independence and strength, or does it encourage defiance and trouble? Kickflip Boys is the story of a father’s struggle to understand his willful skateboarder sons, challengers of authority and convention, to accept his role as a vulnerable “skate dad,” and to confront his fears that the boys are destined for an unconventional and potentially fraught future.With searing honesty, Neal Thompson traces his sons’ progression through all the stages of skateboarding: splurging on skate shoes and boards, having run-ins with security guards, skipping classes and defying teachers, painting graffiti, drinking and smoking, and more. As the story veers from funny to treacherous and back, from skateparks to the streets, Thompson must confront his complicity and fallibility. He also reflects on his upbringing in rural New Jersey, and his own adventures with skateboards, drugs, danger, and defiance. A story of thrill-seeking teens, of hope and love, freedom and failure, Kickflip Boys reveals a sport and a community that have become a refuge for adolescent boys who don’t fit in. Ultimately, it’s the survival story of a loving modern American family, of acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go.
Alphabetter Juice, or The Joy of Text
by Roy Blount Jr.Fresh-squeezed Lexicology, with TwistsNo man of letters savors the ABC's, or serves them up, like language-loving humorist Roy Blount Jr. His glossary, from adhominy to zizz, is hearty, full bodied, and out to please discriminating palates coarse and fine. In 2008, he celebrated the gists, tangs, and energies of letters and their combinations in Alphabet Juice, to wide acclaim. Now, Alphabetter Juice. Which is better.This book is for anyone—novice wordsmith, sensuous reader, or career grammarian—who loves to get physical with words. What is the universal sign of disgust, ew, doing in beautiful and cutie? Why is toadless, but not frogless, in the Oxford English Dictionary? How can the U. S. Supreme Court find relevance in gollywoddles? Might there be scientific evidence for the sonicky value of hunch? And why would someone not bother to spell correctly the very word he is trying to define on Urbandictionary.com?Digging into how locutions evolve, and work, or fail, Blount draws upon everything from The Tempest to The Wire. He takes us to Iceland, for salmon-watching with a "girl gillie," and to Georgian England, where a distinguished etymologist bites off more of a "giantess" than he can chew. Jimmy Stewart appears, in connection with kludge and the bombing of Switzerland. Litigation over supercalifragilisticexpialidocious leads to a vintage werewolf movie; news of possum-tossing, to metanarrative.As Michael Dirda wrote in The Washington Post Book World, "The immensely likeable Blount clearly possesses what was called in the Italian Renaissance ‘sprezzatura,' that rare and enviable ability to do even the most difficult things without breaking a sweat." Alphabetter Juice is brimming with sprezzatura. Have a taste.
Life Sentences: Writings from Inside an American Prison
by The Elsinore-Bennu Think Tank for Restorative JusticeA collection of autobiographical writing by prison inmates that illuminates the challenges of the American criminal justice system. A collection of poetry and prose by six incarcerated men. Featuring an introduction by Amber Epps and an afterword by novelist John Edgar Wideman. The six authors of Life Sentences—Fly, Faruq, Khalifa, Malakki, Oscar, and Shawn—met at the State Correctional Institution in Pittsburgh and came together in 2013 to form the Elsinore Bennu Think Tank for Restorative Justice. The men met weekly for years, along with other writers, activists, and political leaders who bonded over the creation of this book, a hybrid of prison memoir, philosophy, history, policy document, and manifesto. Centered around the principles of restorative justice, which aims to heal communities broken by criminal and state violence through collective action, Life Sentences is more than a literary collection. It is a how to guide for those who are trapped inside any community. It's also a letter of invitation, asking readers to join with the incarcerated and their families so we can all continue to fly over walls, form loving connections with each other, and teach one another to be free. An urgent collection that sheds light on the criminal justice system, written by those most directly involved in it.
The Go-Getter: A Story That Tells You How To Be One
by Peter B. Kyne Alan AxelrodThe classic motivational parable that shows how to make your own opportunities in life, updated by bestselling business author Alan Axelrod.Ever since its first printing by William Randolph Hearst in 1921, The Go-Getter has inspired employees and entrepreneurs to take initiative, increase their productivity, and excel against the odds. Now, more than half a million copies later, Alan Axelrod, bestselling author of Patton on Leadership and Elizabeth I, CEO, updates the tale to address today’s most pressing work issues.In The Go-Getter, Bill Peck, a war veteran, persuades Cappy Ricks, the influential founder of the Ricks Logging & Lumbering Company, to let him prove himself by selling skunk wood in odd lengths—a job that everyone knows can only lead to failure. When Peck goes on to beat his quota, Ricks hands Peck the ultimate opportunity and the ultimate test: the quest for an elusive blue vase. Drawing on such classic values as honesty, determination, passion, and responsibility, Peck overcomes nearly insurmountable obstacles to find the vase and launch his career as a successful manager.In a time when managers are too busy for mentoring, how can you maintain positive energy, take control of your career, and prepare yourself to ace the tests that come your way? By applying the timeless lessons in this compulsively readable parable, employees at all levels can learn to rekindle the go-getter in themselves.“Although Kyne’s tale of business smarts has been around for some time, it doesn’t feel dated. . . . the afterword is especially helpful in pinpointing Kyne’s main ideas.” —Publishers Weekly
Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France
by Mary Louise RobertsIn fin-de-siècle France, politics were in an uproar, and gender roles blurred as never before. Into this maelstrom stepped the "new women," a group of primarily urban, middle-class French women who became the objects of intense public scrutiny. Some remained single, some entered nontraditional marriages, and some took up the professions of medicine and law, journalism and teaching. All of them challenged traditional notions of womanhood by living unconventional lives and doing supposedly "masculine" work outside the home. Mary Louise Roberts examines a constellation of famous new women active in journalism and the theater, including Marguerite Durand, founder of the women's newspaper La Fronde; the journalists Séverine and Gyp; and the actress Sarah Bernhardt. Roberts demonstrates how the tolerance for playacting in both these arenas allowed new women to stage acts that profoundly disrupted accepted gender roles. The existence of La Fronde itself was such an act, because it demonstrated that women could write just as well about the same subjects as men—even about the volatile Dreyfus Affair. When female reporters for La Fronde put on disguises to get a scoop or wrote under a pseudonym, and when actresses played men on stage, they demonstrated that gender identities were not fixed or natural, but inherently unstable. Thanks to the adventures of new women like these, conventional domestic femininity was exposed as a choice, not a destiny. Lively, sophisticated, and persuasive, Disruptive Acts will be a major work not just for historians, but also for scholars of cultural studies, gender studies, and the theater.
What's Up Down There?: Questions You'd Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend
by Lissa RankinIn this funny, outrageous and empowering book, Dr. Lissa Rankin answers all the secret gynecological questions that most women wonder about, but have always been afraid to ask.Suppose you had a wise, warm, funny best friend-who just happened to be a gynecologist. You're out with the girls for cocktails and the conversation turns to sex, and then to girly parts. One by one, you start asking her all the questions you've secretly wondered about-and discover that you have a lot in common. If you were to write those questions down, then you'd have What's Up Down There?, a life-changing little book that answers:- Do old ladies have saggy vaginas?- How do male gynecologists have a sex life without feeling like they're stuck at the office?- Is it normal for your inner labia to hang out of your outer labia?- Can the baby feel its mom having sex during pregnancy?- How common is it for one's boobs to be two totally different sizes?And so much more! As outrageously funny as it is empowering, this book reveals how to love yourself and your body-and will have you recommending it to every woman you know. From off-the wall sex questions to serious topics of women's sexual health, What's Up Down There? provides answers to women of all ages and stages.
Trance: A Novel
by Christopher Sorrentino1974: A tiny band of self-styled urban guerrillas, calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army, abducts a newspaper heiress, who then abruptly announces that she has adopted the guerrilla name "Tania" and chosen to remain with her former captors. Has she been brainwashed? Coerced? Could she be sincere? Why would such a nice girl disavow her loving parents, her adoring fiancé, her comfortable home? Why would she suddenly adopt the SLA's cri de coeur, "Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys Upon the Life of the People"? Soon most of the SLA are dead, killed in a suicidal confrontation with police in Los Angeles, forcing Tania and her two remaining comrades--the pompous and abusive General Teko and his duplicitous lieutenant, Yolanda--into hiding, where they will remain for the next sixteen months. Trance, Christopher Sorrentino's mesmerizing and brilliant second novel, traces this fugitive period, leading the reader on a breathtaking, hilarious, and heartbreaking underground tour across a beleaguered America, in the company of scam artists, visionaries, cultists, and a mismatched gang of middle-class people who typify the guiding conceit of their time, that of self-renovation. Along the way he tells the story of a nation divided against itself--parents and children, men and women, black and white; a story of hidebound tradition and radical change, of truth and propaganda, of cynicism and idealism; a story as transfixing and relevant today as it was then.Insightful, compassionate, scathingly funny, and moving, Trance is a virtuoso performance, placing Christopher Sorrentino in the first rank of American novelists.Trance is a 2005 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.
Meltdown in Tibet: China's Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia
by Michael BuckleyTibetans have experienced waves of genocide since the 1950s. Now they are facing ecocide. The Himalayan snowcaps are in meltdown mode, due to climate change—accelerated by a rain of black soot from massive burning of coal and other fuels in both China and India. The mighty rivers of Tibet are being dammed by Chinese engineering consortiums to feed the mainland's thirst for power, and the land is being relentlessly mined in search of minerals to feed China's industrial complex. On the drawing board are plans for a massive engineering project to divert water from Eastern Tibet to water-starved Northern China. Ruthless Chinese repression leaves Tibetans powerless to stop the reckless destruction of their sacred land, but they are not the only victims of this campaign: the nations downstream from Tibet rely heavily on rivers sourced in Tibet for water supply, and for rich silt used in agriculture. This destruction of the region's environment has been happening with little scrutiny until now. In Meltdown in Tibet, Michael Buckley turns the spotlight on the darkest side of China's emergence as a global super power.
Prairie Gothic (Mad Dog & Englishman Series #0)
by J. M. HayesAs a howling blizzard blows down upon the sparsely-populated Benteen County seat of Buffalo Springs, Kansas, Sheriff English encounters a doll and a dead baby. Their bodies have been switched, but by whom? And why? The elderly coroner disclaims any knowledge, but seems uneasy when a swastika is revealed on the tiny corpse.Meanwhile, the sheriff's part-Cheyenne half-brother, "Mad Dog" Maddox, has collected a naked body from the Sunshine Towers retirement home and is headed toward a treetop burial when he is diverted by the storm. In a makeshift mound nearby, Mad Dog's pet wolf-dog hybrid finds a child's skull, evidence of adult bones, and a fading ID for a living County Supervisor. Can the Hornbaker clan really be as gothic as it seems? And what of the tiny woman in the red shoes back at the Towers who calls herself Dorothy...?
Terra Nostra (Folio Ser. #Vol. 38141)
by Carlos FuentesTerra Nostra is one of the great masterpieces of modern Latin American fiction. Concerned with nothing less than the history of Spain and of South America, with the Indian Gods and with Christianity, with the birth, the passion, and the death of civilizations, Fuentes's great novel is, indeed, that rare creation--the total work of art.Magnificently translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, Terra Nostra is, as Milan Kundera says in his afterword, "the spreading out of the novel, the exploration of its possibilities, the voyage to the edge of what only a novelist can see and say."
Progress in Pattern Recognition, Image Analysis, Computer Vision, and Applications: 27th Iberoamerican Congress, CIARP 2024, Talca, Chile, November 26–29, 2024, Proceedings, Part I (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #15368)
by Ruber Hernández-García Ricardo J. Barrientos Sergio A. VelastinThis two-volume set LNCS 15368-15369 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 27th Iberoamerican Congress on Progress in Pattern Recognition, Image Analysis, Computer Vision, and Applications, CIARP 2024, held in Talca, Chile, during November 26-29, 2024. The 35 full and 3 short papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. The papers presented in these two volumes are clustered into various thematical issues as follows: Part I: Mathematical methods and computing techniques for artificial intelligence and pattern recognition, bioinformatics. Part II: Biometrics, cognitive and humanoid vision, computer vision, image analysis, intelligent data analysis.
Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit
by Helen Rose Fuchs EbaughThe experience of becoming an ex is common to most people in modern society. Unlike individuals in earlier cultures who usually spent their entire lives in one marriage, one career, one religion, one geographic locality, people living in today's world tend to move in and out of many roles in the course of a lifetime. During the past decade there has been persistent interest in these "passages" or "turning points," but very little research has dealt with what it means to leave behind a major role or incorporate it into a new identity. Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh's pathbreaking inquiry into the phenomenon of becoming an ex reveals the profundity of this basic aspect of establishing an identity in contemporary life. Ebaugh is herself an ex, having left the life of a Catholic nun to become a wife, mother, and professor of sociology. Drawing on interviews with 185 people, Ebaugh explores a wide range of role changes, including ex-convicts, ex-alcoholics, divorced people, mothers without custody of their children, ex-doctors, ex-cops, retirees, ex-nuns, and—perhaps most dramatically—transsexuals. As this diverse sample reveals, Ebaugh focuses on voluntary exits from significant roles. What emerges are common stages of the role exit process—from disillusionment with a particular identity, to searching for alternative roles, to turning points that trigger a final decision to exit, and finally to the creation of an identify as an ex.Becoming an Ex is a challenging and influential study that will be of great interest to sociologists, mental health counselors, members of self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Parents Without Partners, those in corporate settings where turnover has widespread implications for the organization, and for anyone struggling through a role exit who is trying to establish a new sense of self.
Modern Ladino Culture: Press, Belles Lettres, and Theater in the Late Ottoman Empire (Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies)
by Olga BorovayaOlga Borovaya explores the emergence and expansion of print culture in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), the mother tongue of the Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman Empire, in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. She provides the first comprehensive study of the three major forms of Ladino literary production—the press, belles lettres, and theater—as a single cultural phenomenon. The product of meticulous research and innovative methodology, Modern Ladino Culture offers a new perspective on the history of the Ladino press, a novel approach to the study of belles lettres in Ladino and their relationship to their European sources, and a fine-grained critique of Sephardic plays as venues for moral education and politicization.
The Legendary Mizners
by Alva JohnstonThe real-life adventures of Addison and Wilson Mizner, the subjects of the Stephen Sondheim musical Gold!Alva Johnston's joint biography of Addison and Wilson Mizner is a delightful portrait of two of the early twentieth century's most clever and infamous rascals. Born in the 1870s in California, the brothers quickly rose to prominence during the various booms of the 1920s.Addison, the elder, was a self-made architect and real-estate dealer who designed many of the fantastic homes of the fantastically rich in Palm Beach. He could "age" a house and its furnishings to any period his client desired--and would pay for. Wilson's adventures were even more daring and varied, and his quick wit was legendary. In addition to getting rich on the Alaskan gold rush, he had careers as a singer, playwright, prizefight promoter, con man, real-estate salesman, and shady hotel owner. Perhaps his most famous quip was one he delivered on being told that President Coolidge had died: "How do they know?"