by photos. and text by Barbara McKenzie (1980)
"Succinct text from photographer Barbara McKenzie and a foreword by Robert Coles provide context for this moving collection of photographs of the middle Georgia Flannery O’Connor depicted in her fiction. Whether capturing highway signs proclaiming Christ or a restaurant five hundred yards up the road, the frenzied motions of persons seized by the Holy Spirit, or quiet folks, black and white, sitting on benches in town squares, these photographs portray strikingly and sympathetically the world O’Connor wrote about in her remarkable stories."--Amazon.com.
Rubén Gallo
An anthology of writings, combining literary essays and urban reportage, by various authors, depicts life in Mexico City, describing places and elements old and new, the Metro, monuments, eating and drinking, urban renewal and its disasters, the earthquake, maids, corruption and bureaucracy, the city at its margins, and more.
Ted Kooser
"Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the Bohemian Alps of southeastern Nebraska. Like many other people in this rural area, he has what he calls "wolf vision"--He sees every change in the landscape around him. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention. Memories of his grandmother's cooking are juxtaposed with reflections about the old-fashioned outhouse on his property." "In the end, what makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his neighbors care for one another and how an afternoon walking with an old dog, or baking a pie, or decorating the house for Christmas can summon memories of his Iowa childhood. This writer is a seer in the truest sense of the word, discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary, the deep beneath the shallow, the abiding wisdom in the pithy Bohemian proverbs that are woven into his essays. And when casting his eye on social progress, Kooser reminds us that the closing of local schools, thoughtless county weed control, and irresponsible housing development destroy more than just the view. At stake are communities, as well as families, our health, and arguably our very souls."--Jacket.
Andrew Beattie
"Since its foundation in the ninth century Prague has punched way above its weight to become a fulcrum of European culture. The city's most illustrious figures in the fields of music, literature and film are well known: Mozart staged the premiere of his opera Don Giovanni here; in the early twentieth century Franz Kafka was at the forefront of the city's intellectual life, while later writers such as Milan Kundera and film directors such as Milos Forman chronicled Prague's fortunes under communism. Yet the city has a cultural heritage that runs far deeper than Kafka museums and Mozart-by-candlelight concerts. It encompasses the avant-garde punk group Plastic People of the Universe, the "new wave" film directors of the 1960s who made their striking movies in the city's famed Barrandov studios, and artists such as Alfons Mucha and Frantisek Kupka whose revolutionary canvases fomented Art Nouveau and abstract art at the dawn of the twentieth century. Beyond art galleries, concert halls and cinemas the history of Prague has been one of invasion and sometimes brutal oppression. The great German chancellor Otto von Bismarck once commented that "whoever controls Prague, controls mid-Europe" and a succession of imperialist powers have taken this advice to heart, most recently Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Opposition has taken many forms, from the religious reformer Jan Hus in the fifteenth century to playwright and dissident Václav Havel, whose elevation to the Czechoslovak presidency in 1990 made him a symbol of the rebirth of democracy in Eastern Europe. In this book Andrew Beattie also reflects on the modern city, where bold new buildings such as Frank Gehry's "Dancing House" rub shoulders with monuments from the Gothic and Baroque eras such as the Charles Bridge and St. Vitus' Cathedral. He considers the suburbs too, home to world-renowned soccer and ice hockey teams, gleaming shopping centers and grim communist-era apartment blocks that are often home to Vietnamese, Romany and Muslim minority groups who live in a city with a growing international outlook. The Prague he reveals is an increasingly confident and diverse city of the new Europe."--Publisher's description.
Jonathan S. Addleton
Born in Pakistan to Baptist missionaries from rural Georgia, Jonathan S. Addleton crossed the borders of race, culture, class, and religion from an early age. Some Far and Distant Place combines family history, social observation, current events, and deeply personal commentary to tell an unusual coming-of-age story that has as much to do with the intersection of cultures as its does with one man's life. Whether sharing ice cream with a young Benazir Bhutto or selling Gospel tracts at the tomb of a Sufi saint, Addleton provides insightful glimpses into the Muslim-Christian encounter through the eyes of a young child. His narrative is rooted in many unlikely sources, including a southern storytelling tradition, Urdu ghazal, revivalist hymnology, and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The natural beauty of the Himalayas also leaves a strong and lasting mark, providing solidity in a confusing world that on occasion seems about to tilt out of control.