Author: Roy Blount Jr. Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0062009761 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 181
Book Description
Nearly eighty years after its release, the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup remains one of the most influential pieces of political satire in history. In Hail, Hail, Euphoria!, bestselling author Roy Blount Jr. tells the history and making of Duck Soup, examining the comedic genius of the Marx Brothers in their finest hour and nine minutes. In Duck Soup, a slim, agile, quick-witted, self-assured young man is summoned to save a nation from financial ruin. As the nation's new president, he brings together a team of rivals, a band of brothers. Those brothers are Pinky, Chicolini, and Lt. Bob Roland. Their leader? None other than Rufus T. Firefly. The humor and idiosyncratic wit of Duck Soup are saluted by the author's own in this gem of a book, offering a behind-the-scenes tale of show business and brotherhood that only a true Marx Brothers aficionado could tell.
Author: Roy Blount Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0062009761 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 166
Book Description
Nearly eighty years after its release, the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup remains one of the most influential pieces of political satire in history. In Hail, Hail, Euphoria!, bestselling author Roy Blount Jr. tells the history and making of Duck Soup, examining the comedic genius of the Marx Brothers in their finest hour and nine minutes. In Duck Soup, a slim, agile, quick-witted, self-assured young man is summoned to save a nation from financial ruin. As the nation's new president, he brings together a team of rivals, a band of brothers. Those brothers are Pinky, Chicolini, and Lt. Bob Roland. Their leader? None other than Rufus T. Firefly. The humor and idiosyncratic wit of Duck Soup are saluted by the author's own in this gem of a book, offering a behind-the-scenes tale of show business and brotherhood that only a true Marx Brothers aficionado could tell.
Author: Pierce Brown Publisher: Del Rey ISBN: 0345539796 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 414
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dystopian field.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness “I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER
Author: Phil Tucker Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform ISBN: 9781723224713 Category : Virtual reality Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
I sacrificed everything for my family. It wasn't enough. I lost my mother, and now I'm about to lose my brother. I've got only one thing left to gamble: my life. Which is why I'm willing to play Euphoria Online in Death March mode. If I survive six months in-game against a lethal array of wyverns, ogres, necromancers, and more, I'll earn my brother a pardon. If I lose? Well. I'm done with losing.
Author: Roy Blount, Jr., Jr. Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books ISBN: 0374712883 Category : Humor Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
Our best-laid plans will yield to fate. And we will say, “We lived. We ate.” Roy Blount Jr. is one of America’s most cherished comic writers. He’s been compared to Mark Twain and James Thurber, and his books have been called everything from “a work of art” (Robert W. Creamer, The New York Times Book Review) to “a book to read till it falls apart” (Newsweek). Now, in Save Room for Pie, he applies his much-praised wit and charm to a rich and fundamental topic: food. As a lifelong eater, Blount always got along easy with food—he didn’t have to think, he just ate. But food doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blount’s chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell, and consequently his taste buds. So while he’s always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed. Save Room for Pie grapples with these and other food-related questions in Blount’s signature style. Here you’ll find lively meditations on everything from bacon froth to grapefruit, Kobe beef to biscuits. You’ll also find defenses of gizzards, mullet, okra, cane syrup, watermelon, and boiled peanuts; an imagined dialogue between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; input from Louis Armstrong, Frederick Douglass, and Blaze Starr; and of course some shampooed possums and carjacking turkeys. In poems and songs, limericks and fake (or sometimes true) news stories, Blount talks about food in surprising and innovative ways, with all the wit and verve that prompted Garrison Keillor, in The Paris Review, to say: “Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth, and soulful all in one sentence.”
Author: Roy Blount Publisher: Macmillan + ORM ISBN: 1429922788 Category : Humor Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
Fresh-squeezed Lexicology, with Twists No 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.
Author: Diane Jacobs Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520335414 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 540
Book Description
In this first critical biography of Preston Sturges, Diane Jacobs brings to life the great comic filmmaker whose career Andrew Sarris described as "one of the most brilliant and bizarre bursts of creation in the history of the American cinema." Jacobs uses letters and manuscripts never before revealed, as well as interviews with people who knew Sturges—including three of his wives—to portray this fascinating, contradictory man. In addition to discussing his major films, she also examines heretofore unknown work and shows that Sturges was highly creative even near the end of his life, a time when many believed he had lost his touch. Sturges secured his place in film history as the creator of such classic films as The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, and The Palm Beach Story. In 1939 he became the first screenwriter to win the right to direct his own script—the result was the Oscar-winning The Great McGinty. Creator of Unfaithfully Yours, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero, he was the third highest-paid man in the United States by the late 1940s. He owned a swank Hollywood restaurant and was known as an ebullient raconteur as well as a world-famous filmmaker. A little over a decade later, Sturges died in New York, impoverished and rejected by Hollywood. The euphoria of success, the fitfulness of luck, the promise and poignancy of the American Dream—the themes of Sturges's work also marked the man. Diane Jacobs achieves a singular success in illuminating his extraordinary life. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.
Author: Pete Bodo Publisher: HMH ISBN: 0547504454 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 325
Book Description
A dedicated deer hunter “writes with humor and insight” about his adventures—and misadventures—in the wild (Orlando Sentinel). Every autumn, millions of men and women across the country don their camo, stock up on doe urine, and undertake a quintessential American tradition—deer hunting. The pinnacle of a hunter’s quest is killing a buck with antlers that “score” highly enough to qualify for the Boone and Crockett record book. But in all his seasons on the trail, Pete Bodo, an avid outdoorsman and student of the hunt, had never reached that milestone. Sadly, he had to admit it: He was a nimrod. Whitetail Nation is the uproarious story of the season Pete Bodo set out to kill the big buck. From the rolling hills of upstate New York to the vast and unforgiving land of the Big Sky to the Texas ranches that feature high fences, deer feeders, and money-back guarantees, Bodo traverses deep into the heart of a lively, growing subculture that draws powerfully on durable American values: the love of the frontier, the importance of self-reliance, the camaraderie of men in adventure, the quest for sustained youth, and yes, the capitalist’s right to amass every high tech hunting gadget this industry’s exploding commerce has to offer. Gradually, Bodo closes in on his target—that elusive monster buck—and with each day spent perched in a deer stand or crawling stealthily in high grass (praying the rattlesnakes are gone), or shivering through the night in a drafty cabin (flannel, polar fleece, and whiskey be damned), readers are treated to an unforgettable tour through a landscape that ranges from the exalted to the absurd. Along the way Bodo deftly captures the spirit and passion of this rich American pursuit, tracing its history back to the days of Lewis and Clark and examining that age old question: “Why do men hunt?”
Author: Ali Smith Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0307279758 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
Filled with the bestselling, award-winning author's trademark wordplay and inventive storytelling, here is the dizzyingly entertaining, wickedly humorous story of a mysterious stranger whose sudden appearance during a family’s summer holiday transforms four variously unhappy people. Each of the Smarts—parents Eve and Michael, son Magnus, and the youngest, daughter Astrid—encounter Amber in his or her own solipsistic way, but somehow her presence allows them to see their lives (and their life together) in a new light. Smith’s narrative freedom and exhilarating facility with language propel the novel to its startling, wonderfully enigmatic conclusion.
Author: Carla T. Main Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com ISBN: 1459611748 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 502
Book Description
Eminent domain entered the awareness of many Americans with the recent U.S. Supreme Court case Kelo v. New London. Across the political spectrum, people were outraged when the Court majority said that a local government may transfer property from one private party to another under the ''public use'' clause of the Constitution, for the sake of ''economic development. Carla T. Main - who in the past, as a lawyer, has represented the condemning authorities in eminent domain cases - examines how property rights in America have come to be so weak, tracing the history of eminent domain from the Revolutionary War to the Kelo case. But the heart of Bulldozed is a story of how eminent domain has affected an American family and the small-town community where they have lived and worked for decades. In the 1940s, Pappy and Isabel Gore established a shrimp processing plant in Freeport, Texas. Three generations of Gores built Western Seafood into a thriving business that stood up to fierce competition and market flux. But Freeport was struggling, and city officials decided that a private yacht marina on the Old Brazos River might save it. They would use eminent domain to take the Gores' waterfront property and hand it over to the developer, an heir of a legendary Texas oil family, in a risky sweetheart deal. For three years, the Gores resisted the taking with every ounce of strength they had. Around them, the fabric of the community unraveled as friends and neighbors took sides. Bulldozed vividly recounts the Gores' fight with city hall, and at the same time ponders larger questions of what property rights mean today and who among us is entitled to hold on to the American Dream.
Author: Roy Blount Jr.
Author: Roy Blount
Author: Pierce Brown
Author: Phil Tucker
Author: Roy Blount, Jr., Jr.
Author: Roy Blount
Author: Diane Jacobs
Author: Pete Bodo
Author: Ali Smith
Author: Carla T. Main