Race and religion among the chosen peoples of Crown Heights

Sample

Jonathan Lethem

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification." This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions—what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money—are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore. This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist. This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives. This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption. This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell. This is THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.

Sample

William H. Gerdts

Collection of three volumes. Vol 1 : New England, New York, Mid-Atlantic. Vol 2 : The South, Near Midwest. Vol 3 : The Far Midwest, Rocky Mountain West, Southwest, Pacific.

Sample

John Guare

When Manhattan art dealers take a younger man into their home believing him to be a friend of their children and Sidney Portier's son, he leaves them with a lasting impression.

Sample

Theodora Vischer and Heidi Naef

"Jeff Wall's large color transparencies set forth an imposing and seductive pictorial world. Ranging from the gritty realism of the city street to bizarre flights of fantasy, his photographs have won him wide recognition as one of the most adventurous and accomplished artists of the past three decades. This book accompanies a major retrospective jointly organized in 2007 by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Neal Benezra, Director, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Between showings in New York and San Francisco, the show visits The Art Institute of Chicago." "Born in 1946 in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he lives and works, Jeff Wall has charted an ambitious and unique path through the maze of contemporary art, drawing upon such diverse resources as Conceptual art, Neorealist cinema, philosophy, literature, critical theory, modernist photography, and the venerable tradition of European painting. The exhibition includes all of his major works to date, which are reproduced here along with several very recent pictures and a generous selection of artistic sources, cousins, and echoes. The latter are illustrations to Galassi's essay, which sketches the breadth and originality of Wall's artistic and intellectual universe and challenges conventional interpretations of his development and achievement. The book also includes an interview with the artist by James Rondeau, Frances & Thomas Dittmer Chairman, Department of Contemporary Art, The Art Institute of Chicago."--Jacket.