In this wonderfully intelligent, stunningly honest, and painfully funny book, acclaimed writer David Shields uses himself as a representative for all readers and writers who seek to find salvation in literature. Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, Shields explores the power of literature (from Blaise Pascal's Pensées to Maggie Nelson's Bluets, Renata Adler's Speedboat to Proust's A Remembrance of Things Past) to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. Shields evokes his deeply divided personality (his "ridiculous" ambivalence), his character flaws, his woes, his serious despairs.
5 days from the life of a luxury hotel in New Orleans in the early 60-ies. "Hotel" takes a critical stance in the civil rights issues of the era. The book is about how little decissions can add up to either good things happening or extremely bad things happening.
In Inclined Planes, inhabitants of Mammoth Island have decided to smash boulders into bits by dropping them off a wooden tower to make gravel for their new roads. While this method does produce gravel, the islanders find it is difficult and even dangerous to hoist boulders up the side of a tower. A young islander, Olive, suggests that they roll the boulders up a ramp instead of hauling them up the tower, and proves that it takes less effort to roll the boulders up an inclined plane, thereby allowing them to get the job done more easily!
The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling
John Taylor Gatto
THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION is a freewheeling investigation into the real - as opposed to the `official' - history of schooling, focused on the U.S. but with examinations of other historical examples for the purposes of comparing and contrasting, as well as for tracing where ideas and concepts related to education originated. You will discover things you were never told in the official version, things that will, at times, surprise, disgust, and scare you. You will also be introduced to the little-known historiography of the the darker side of the construction of compulsory government schooling.
From Plato to Groucho, this comprehensive edition features some of the most quotable people who ever lived. They are the famous, infamous, the little-known, and the unknown, inspired enough by life to comment on it, and smart enough to be clever about it.
