The absurd becomes the truth in these magnificent eight short stories by the contemporary post-Soviet Union author.Victor Pelevin is "the only young... Russian novelist to have made an impression in the West" (Village Voice). A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia, the second of Pelevin's Russian Booker Prize-winning short story collections, continues his Sputnik-like rise. The writers to whom he is frequently compared—Kafka, Bulgakov, Philip K. Dick, and Joseph Heller—are all deft fabulists, who find fuel for their fires in society's deadening protocol. "At the very start of the third semester, in one of the lectures on Marxism-Leninism, Nikita Dozakin made a remarkable discovery," begins the story "Sleep." Nikita's discovery is that everyone around him, from parents to television talk-show hosts, is actually asleep. In "Vera Pavlova's Ninth Dream," the attendant in a public toilet finds that her researches into solipsism have dire and diabolical consequences. In the title story, a young Muscovite, Sasha, stumbles upon a group of people in the forest who can transform themselves into wolves. As Publishers Weekly noted, "Pelevin's allegories are reminiscent of children's fairy tales in their fantastic depictions of worlds within worlds, solitary souls tossed helplessly among them." Pelevin—whom Spin called "a master absurdist, a brilliant satirist of things Soviet, but also of things human"—carries us in A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia to a land of great sublimity and black comic brilliance.

Easy Learning-Rich Activities That Tap Into Students' Multiple Intelligences and Bring Excitement and Fun to Your Grammar Lessons\n\nBy Susan Van... Zile\n\nClassroom Tested! \nDo you know students that groan at the mere mention of the word grammar? This teacher-written resource will help you motivate kids to learn -- even enjoy -- grammar. Hands-on activities like Foil the Fragments, Great Sentence Caper, and Vivid Verb Cheers encourage students' creativity and help them remember the concepts they need to know. Also includes mini lessons, rubrics, reproducibles, and photographs. Make this an enriching addition to your grammar lessons!\n\n80 pages 8-1/2" x 11"\nGrades 4-8

Awesome Nightfall captures the power of Saigyo's poetry and this previously overlooked poet's keen insight into the social and political world of... medieval Japan. It also offers a fascinating look into the world of Japanese Buddhism prior to the wholesale influence of Zen. LaFleur's much-heralded translation and commentary make this book ideal both for the poetry lover, and for the professor and student of Asian arts and languages.

The lives of many lesbians who grew up before 1965 remain cloaked inmystery. Historians have illuminated the worlds of upper-middle-class"romantic... friends" and working-class butch and femme womenwho frequented lesbian bars in the '50s and '60s. Themajority of lesbians, however, were lower-middle-class women who hidtheir sexual identity by engaging in discreet social and sexualrelationships. Drawing on correspondence, interviews, journals, and newspaperarticles, Awfully Devoted Women offers a nuanced portrait ofthe lives of middle-class lesbians in the decades before the gay rightsmovement in English-Canada. Accounts and explorations of thesewomen's sexual practices, thoughts on same-sex desire, andrelations with friends and family unveil a world of privaterelationships, house parties, and discreet social networks. Thisintimate study of the lives of women forced to love in secret not onlychallenges the idea that lesbian relationships in the past wereasexual, it also reveals the courage it took for women to exploredesire in an era when they were supposed to know little aboutsexuality.Awfully Devoted Women is the first book-length study oflesbian sexuality, relationships, and community in Canada before 1965.It will be of interest to students and practitioners of Canadianhistory and women's studies and to anyone interested in thehistory of sexuality.

This is the 25th anniversary edition of the creativity classic by Dr. Roger von Oech. Over the years, A WHACK ON THE SIDE OF THE HEAD has been praised... by business people, educators, scientists, homemakers, artists, youth leaders, and many more. The book has been stimulating creativity in millions of readers, translated into eleven languages, and used in seminars around the world. Now Roger von Oech's fully illustrated and updated volume is filled with even more provocative puzzles, anecdotes, exercises, metaphors, cartoons, questions, quotations, stories, and tips designed to systematically break through your mental blocks and unlock your mind for creative thinking. This new edition will attract an entire new generation of readers with updated and mind-stretching material.

A celebration of the past in stories dealing with female friendships and tales that portray the resilience with which her female characters respond to... poverty. Includes "The Town Poor," "Miss Peck's Promotion," "The Passing of Sister Barsett," "The Denham Ladies," "Miss Tempy’s Watchers," and 5 more. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

A White Side of Black Britain explores the racial consciousness of white women who have established families and had children with black men of African... Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom. Filling a gap in the sociological literature on racism and antiracism, France Winddance Twine introduces new theoretical concepts in her description and analysis of white “transracial” mothers raising their children of African Caribbean ancestry in a racially diverse British city. Varying in age, income, education, and marital status, the transracial mothers at the center of Twine’s ethnography share moving stories about how they cope with racism and teach their children to identify and respond to it. They also discuss how and why their thinking about race, racism, and whiteness changed over time. Interviewing and observing more than forty multiracial families over a decade, Twine discovered that in most of them, the white woman’s racial consciousness and her ability to recognize and negotiate racism were derived as much from her relationships with her black partner and his extended family as from her female friends. In addition to the white birth mothers, Twine interviewed their children, spouses, domestic partners, friends, and members of their extended families. Her book is best characterized as an ethnography of racial consciousness and a dialogue between black and white family members about the meaning of race, racism, and whiteness. It includes intimate photographs of the family members and their communities.

Veteran teacher Julie Landsman leads the reader through a day of teaching and reflection about her work with high school students who are from a variety... of cultures. She speaks honestly about issues of race, poverty, institutional responsibility, and white privilege by engaging the reader in the experiences of a day in the classroom with some of her remarkable students. Throughout the day, we meet bigotry head-on, struggle with questions of racial identity, and find cultural conflict in the corridors of the school building. Along the way, we come face to face with Tyrone, a young African-American student grappling with the realities of discrimination in suburbia. We encounter Sheila, a teenage mother struggling to raise her baby in poverty, and we get to know Sarah, a white girl living on the streets of Minneapolis. Through the author's eyes, we begin to understand the complexities of teaching in today's society and we learn within the pages of this book, if only just for a moment, what it feels like to be the other.

All Whitman scholars have encountered the frustration of trying to track down an event in Whitman's life—the last time he saw Peter Doyle, when... he moved to his own home on Mickle Street in Camden, when he met Oscar Wilde. The records of these events in Whitman's long life are buried in seven volumes of his abundant correspondence, in nine volumes of his conversations with Horace Traubel, in nine volumes of his notebooks and manuscripts, and in countless writings produced by his friends and admirers. To fulfill a long-felt need for order among this embarrassment of riches, Joann Krieg has crafted this detailed chronology of Whitman's life.A Whitman Chronology clarifies the facts of Whitman's life by offering a year-by-year and, where possible, day-by-day account of his private and public life. Where conflicting interpretations exist, Krieg recognizes them and cites the differences; she also directs readers to fuller descriptions of noteworthy events. She offers brief synopses of Whitman's fiction and of his major prose works, giving distinguishing information about each of the six editions of Leaves of Grass. By intertwining the events of his life and work—but without cumbersome layers of speculation—she reveals the close alliance between Whitman's personal involvements and his literary achievements.

Bringing together the work of prominent scholars and rising stars in southern, western, and Indian history, A Whole Country in Commotion explores... lesser-known aspects of one of the better-known episodes in U.S. history. While the purchase has been seen as a great boon for the United States, doubling the size of the new nation and securing American navigation on the Mississippi River, it also brought turmoil to many.Looking past the triumphal aspects of the purchase, this book examines the “negotiations among peoples, nations and empires that preceded and followed the actual transfer of territory.” Its nine essays highlight the “commotion” the purchase stirred up—among nations, among Louisiana residents and newcomers, even among those who remained east of the Mississippi.Many of these essays look at the portion of the Louisiana territory that would become Arkansas to illustrate the profound impact of the purchase on the diverse populations of the American Southwest. Others explore the woeful commotion brought to many thousands of lives as Jefferson’s “noble bargain” set the stage for the forced migration of native and African Americans from the east to the west of the Mississippi.

"... a signal contribution to a growing literature on a phenomenon that has become tragically pervasive in the 20th century.... This highly original... account combines exemplary empirical research with the judicious application of diverse methods to explore the far-reaching ramifications of 'a whole empire walking.'" —Vucinich Prize citation"An important contribution not only to modern Russian history but also to an ongoing repositioning of Russia in broader European and world historical processes.... elegantly written... highly innovative." —Europe-Asia Studies Drawing on previously unused archival material in Russia, Latvia, and Armenia and on insights from social and critical theory, Peter Gatrell considers the origins of displacement and its political implications and provides a close analysis of humanitarian initiatives and the relationships between refugees and the communities in which they settled.

Lawyers. Accountants. Radiologists. Software  engineers. That's what our parents encouraged us to become when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong.... The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which "right brain" qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate. That's the argument at the center of this provocative and original book, which uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times.   In the tradition of Emotional Intelligence and Now, Discover Your Strengths, Daniel H. Pink offers a fresh look at what it takes to excel. A Whole New Mind reveals the six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend, and includes a series of hands-on exercises culled from experts around the world to help readers sharpen the necessary abilities. This book will change not only how we see the world but how we experience it as well.  

The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain"... thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.Drawing on research from around the world, Pink outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that are absolute essentials for professional success and personal fulfillment-and reveals how to master them. A Whole New Mind takes readers to a daring new place, and a provocative and necessary new way of thinking about a future that's already here.