A Fortunate Age

A Fortunate Age PDF Author: Joanna Smith Rakoff
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781416596332
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Like The Group, Mary McCarthy's classic tale about coming of age in New York, Joanna Smith Rakoff 's richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century. There's Lil, a would-be scholar whose marriage to an egotistical writer initially brings the group back together (and ultimately drives it apart); Beth, who struggles to let go of her old beau Dave, a onetime piano prodigy trapped by his own insecurity; Emily, an actor perpetually on the verge of success -- and starvation -- who grapples with her jealousy of Tal, whose acting career has taken off. At the center of their orbit is wry, charismatic Sadie Peregrine, who coolly observes her friends' mistakes but can't quite manage to avoid making her own. As they begin their careers, marry, and have children, they must navigate the shifting dynamics of their friendships and of the world around them. Set against the backdrop of the vast economic and political changes of the era -- from the decadent age of dot-com millionaires to the sobering post-September 2001 landscape -- Smith Rakoff's deeply affecting characters and incisive social commentary are reminiscent of the great Victorian novels. This brilliant and ambitious debut captures a generation and heralds the arrival of a bold and important new writer.

A Fortunate Age

A Fortunate Age PDF Author: Joanna Smith Rakoff
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781416596332
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book

Book Description
Like The Group, Mary McCarthy's classic tale about coming of age in New York, Joanna Smith Rakoff 's richly drawn and immensely satisfying first novel details the lives of a group of Oberlin graduates whose ambitions and friendships threaten to unravel as they chase their dreams, shed their youth, and build their lives in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the turn of the twenty-first century. There's Lil, a would-be scholar whose marriage to an egotistical writer initially brings the group back together (and ultimately drives it apart); Beth, who struggles to let go of her old beau Dave, a onetime piano prodigy trapped by his own insecurity; Emily, an actor perpetually on the verge of success -- and starvation -- who grapples with her jealousy of Tal, whose acting career has taken off. At the center of their orbit is wry, charismatic Sadie Peregrine, who coolly observes her friends' mistakes but can't quite manage to avoid making her own. As they begin their careers, marry, and have children, they must navigate the shifting dynamics of their friendships and of the world around them. Set against the backdrop of the vast economic and political changes of the era -- from the decadent age of dot-com millionaires to the sobering post-September 2001 landscape -- Smith Rakoff's deeply affecting characters and incisive social commentary are reminiscent of the great Victorian novels. This brilliant and ambitious debut captures a generation and heralds the arrival of a bold and important new writer.

Your Band Sucks

Your Band Sucks PDF Author: Jon Fine
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014310828X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A memoir charting thirty years of the American indie rock underground by a musician who was at its center Jon Fine spent nearly thirty years performing and recording with bands that played aggressive and challenging underground rock music, and, as he writes, at no point were any of those bands “ever threatened, even distantly, by actual fame.” Yet when the members of his 1980s post-hardcore band Bitch Magnet came together for an unlikely reunion tour in 2011, diehard fans traveled from far and wide to attend their shows, despite creeping middle-age obligations of parenthood and 9-to-5 jobs. Their devotion was testament to the remarkable staying power of indie culture. In indie rock’s pre-Internet glory days, bands like Bitch Magnet, Black Flag, Mission of Burma, and Sonic Youth—operating far outside commercial radio and major label promotion—attracted fans through word of mouth, college DJs, record stores, and zines. They found glory in all-night recording sessions, shoestring van tours, and endless appearances in grimy clubs. Some bands with a foot in this scene, like REM and Nirvana, eventually attained mainstream success. Many others, like Bitch Magnet, were beloved only by the most obsessed fans of the time. Your Band Sucks is an insider’s look at that fascinating, outrageous culture—how it emerged and evolved, how it grappled with the mainstream and vice versa, and its odd rebirth in recent years as countless bands reunited, briefly and bittersweetly. With backstage access to many key characters on the scene—and plenty of wit and sharply worded opinion—Fine delivers a memoir that affectionately yet critically portrays an important, heady moment in music history. Praise for Your Band Sucks: “Everything a cult-fave musician’s memoir should be: It’s a seductively readable book that requires no previous knowledge of the author, Bitch Magnet or any other band with which he’s played.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Jon Fine has produced as evocative a portrait of the underground music scene as any wistful, graying post-punk could wish for.” —The Atlantic

Invisible Countries

Invisible Countries PDF Author: Joshua Keating
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300235054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
A journalist explores how our world’s borders came to be and how self-proclaimed countries across the globe could change the map. What is a country? While certain basic criteria—borders, a government, and recognition from other countries—seem obvious, journalist Joshua Keating investigates what happens in areas of the world that exist as exceptions to these rules. Invisible Countries looks at semiautonomous countries such as Abkhazia, Kurdistan, and Somaliland, as well as a Mohawk reservation straddling the U.S.-Canada border, and an island nation whose very existence is threatened by climate change. Through stories about these would-be countries’ efforts at self-determination, Keating shows that there is no universal legal authority determining what a country is. He also argues that economic, cultural, and environmental forces could soon bring an end to our long period of cartographical stasis. Keating combines history with incisive observations drawn from his travels and interviews with residents, political leaders, and scholars in each of these “invisible countries.”

The Oberlin Review

The Oberlin Review PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : College students
Languages : en
Pages : 640

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Book Description


Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism

Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism PDF Author: J. Brent Morris
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469618273
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism: College, Community, and the Fight for Freedom and Equality in Antebellum America

Eleutheria

Eleutheria PDF Author: Allegra Hyde
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593315251
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
“Allegra Hyde’s seductive first novel tackles the big stuff of climate change and the more intimate matter of heartbreak with grace. Indeed, Eleutheria bravely braids these together, the story of a lost soul moving through the world we’re rapidly losing.” —Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind Willa Marks has spent her whole life choosing hope. She chooses hope over her parents’ paranoid conspiracy theories, over her dead-end job, over the rising ocean levels. And when she meets Sylvia Gill, renowned Harvard professor, she feels she’s found the justification of that hope. Sylvia is the woman-in-black: the only person smart and sharp enough to compel the world to action. But when Sylvia betrays her, Willa fears she has lost hope forever. And then she finds a book in Sylvia's library: a guide to fighting climate change called Living the Solution. Inspired by its message and with nothing to lose, Willa flies to the island of Eleutheria in the Bahamas to join the author and his group of ecowarriors at Camp Hope. Upon arrival, things are not what she expected. The group’s leader, author Roy Adams, is missing, and the compound’s public launch is delayed. With time running out, Willa will stop at nothing to realize Camp Hope's mission—but at what cost? A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

Brothers at War

Brothers at War PDF Author: Luce Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager
Publisher: Profile Books(GB)
ISBN: 9781846680717
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
Distinguished American professor Sheila Miyoshi Jager interweaves international events and previously unknown personal accounts to give a brilliant new history of the war, its aftermath and its global impact told from American, Korean, Soviet and Chinese sides. This is the first account to examine not only the military, but the social and political aspects of the war across the whole region - and it takes the story up to the present day.Drawing on newly accessible diplomatic archives and reports from South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Comission, Jager not only analyses top-level military strategy but also depicts on-the-ground atrocities committed by both side that have never been revealed. The most accessible, up-to-date and balanced account yet written, rich with maps and illustrations, Brothers at War is the thrilling and highly original debut of a historian comparable to Max Hastings or Antony Beevor. It will become the definitive chronicle of the struggle's origins, aftermath, and global impact.

Oberlin History

Oberlin History PDF Author: Geoffrey Blodgett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
It was during the tumultuous years of the late 1960s and early 1970s that Geoffrey Blodgett turned his attention to the rich history of Oberlin College and its surrounding northern Ohio community. He understood that well-researched and thoughtfully interpreted history can help a community better understand its mission and values and address its current dilemmas, and his aim for these essays was to help put contemporary campus crises and conflicts into historical context. Although several essays included in Oberlin History were originally published in scholarly journals, Blodgett clearly wrote these for an Oberlin audience. Elegantly written and grounded in wide-ranging historical scholarship, Blodgett's work is far more sophisticated than most local and institutional histories.

The Oberlin Quarterly Review

The Oberlin Quarterly Review PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1026

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Book Description


Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College

Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College PDF Author: Roland M. Baumann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
A richly illustrated volume presenting a comprehensive history of the education of African American students at Oberlin College.