Nearly twenty years in the making, Can’t Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. That the Beatles... were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. In Can’t Buy Me Love, Jonathan Gould seeks to explain why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise. Beginning with their adolescence in Liverpool, Gould describes the seminal influences––from Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry to The Goon Show and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland––that shaped the Beatles both as individuals and as a group. In addition to chronicling their growth as singers, songwriters, and instrumentalists, he highlights the advances in recording technology that made their sound both possible and unique, as well as the developments in television and radio that lent an explosive force to their popular success. With a musician’s ear, Gould sensitively evokes the timeless appeal of the Lennon-McCartney collaboration and their emergence as one of the most creative and significant songwriting teams in history. And he sheds new light on the significance of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as rock’s first concept album, down to its memorable cover art.Behind the scenes Gould explores the pivotal roles played by manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin, credits the influence on the Beatles’ music of contemporaries like Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Ravi Shankar, and traces the gradual escalation of the fractious internal rivalries that led to the group’s breakup after their final masterpiece, Abbey Road. Most significantly, by chronicling their revolutionary impact on popular culture during the 1960s, Can’t Buy Me Love illuminates the Beatles as a charismatic phenomenon of international proportions, whose anarchic energy and unexpected import was derived from the historic shifts in fortune that transformed the relationship between Britain and America in the decades after World War II. From the Beats in America and the Angry Young Men in England to the shadow of the Profumo Affair and JFK’s assassination, Gould captures the pulse of a time that made the Beatles possible—and even necessary. As seen through the prism of the Beatles and their music, an entire generation’s experience comes astonishingly to life. Beautifully written, consistently insightful, and utterly original, Can’t Buy Me Love is a landmark work about the Beatles, Britain, and America.From the Hardcover edition.

"When was the last time you felt this comfortable in a relationship?" -- An ad for sneakers "You can love it without getting your heart broken." --... An ad for a car "Until I find a real man, I'll settle for a real smoke." -- A woman in a cigarette ad Many advertisements these days make us feel as if we have an intimate, even passionate relationship with a product. But as Jean Kilbourne points out in this fascinating and shocking exposé, the dreamlike promise of advertising always leaves us hungry for more. We can never be satisfied, because the products we love cannot love us back. Drawing upon her knowledge of psychology, media, and women's issues, Kilbourne offers nothing less than a new understanding of a ubiquitous phenomenon in our culture. The average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day and watches three years' worth of television ads over the course of a lifetime. Kilbourne paints a gripping portrait of how this barrage of advertising drastically affects young people, especially girls, by offering false promises of rebellion, connection, and control. She also offers a surprising analysis of the way advertising creates and then feeds an addictive mentality that often continues throughout adulthood.

A reader-friendly edition of the four marriage tales of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The book is in the original Middle English but with modernized... spelling, as in Shakespeare texts, which makes the stories much more accessible and enjoyable to the modern reader.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly written... in verse although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
After a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, the Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of its characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection resembles The Decameron, which Chaucer may have read during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.

Its the last ski weekend of the season and a mishmash of snow-enthusiasts is on its way to a remote backwoods cabin. In an odd pilgrimage through the... mountains, the townsfolk of Coaltonfrom the ski bum to the urbaniteembark on a bizarre adventure that walks the line between comedy and tragedy. As the rednecks mount their sleds and the hippies snowshoe through the cedar forest, we see rivals converge for the weekend. While readers follow the characters on their voyage up and over the mountain, stereotypes of ski-town culture fall away. Loco, the ski bum, is about to start his first real job; Alison, the urbanite, is forced to learn how to wield an avalanche shovel; and Michael, the real estate developer, is high on mushroom tea. In a blend of mordant humour and heartbreak, Angie Abdou chronicles a day in the life of these industrious few as they attempt to conquer the mountain. In an avalanche of action, Angie Abdou explores the way in which people treat their fellow citizens and the landscape they love.

From the narcotic allure of the bebop and Beat generations to the psychedelic 1960s, Vietnam, the cocaine-fueled disco era, the crack epidemic, and the... ecstasy-induced rave culture, illegal drugs have profoundly shaped America's cultural landscape. In Can't Find My Way Home, journalist and filmmaker Martin Torgoff chronicles what a long strange trip it's been as the American Century became the Great Stoned Age. Weaving together first-person accounts and historical background, Can't Find My Way Home is a narrative vast in scope yet rich in intimate detail. Torgoff tells the stories of those whose lives became synonymous with the drug culture, from Charlie Parker, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and John Belushi to ordinary people who felt their consciousness "expanded" or who plumbed the depths of addiction. He also examines the broader impact of drugs on society and politics, from the war on drugs to the recovery movement, and the continuing debate over drug policy. A vivid work of cultural history that neither demonizes nor romanticizes its subject, Can't Find My Way Home is a provocative and fascinating look at how drugs have entered the American mainstream.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's original essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" transformed the analysis of colonialism through an eloquent and uncompromising... argument that affirmed the contemporary relevance of Marxism while using deconstructionist methods to explore the international division of labor and capitalism's "worlding" of the world. Spivak's essay hones in on the historical and ideological factors that obstruct the possibility of being heard for those who inhabit the periphery. It is a probing interrogation of what it means to have political subjectivity, to be able to access the state, and to suffer the burden of difference in a capitalist system that promises equality yet withholds it at every turn.Since its publication, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" has been cited, invoked, imitated, and critiqued. In these phenomenal essays, eight scholars take stock of the effects and response to Spivak's work. They begin by contextualizing the piece within the development of subaltern and postcolonial studies and the quest for human rights. Then, through the lens of Spivak's essay, they rethink historical problems of subalternity, voicing, and death. A final section situates "Can the Subaltern Speak?" within contemporary issues, particularly new international divisions of labor and the politics of silence among indigenous women of Guatemala and Mexico. In an afterword, Spivak herself considers her essay's past interpretations and future incarnations and the questions and histories that remain secreted in the original and revised versions of "Can the Subaltern Speak?"—both of which are reprinted in this book.

Brilliantly lays out the bitter truth: that the American workplace is a dictatorship where workers have few, if any, rights." -Barbara Ehrenreich,... author of Nickel and Dimed An expose of the shocking ways that companies invade employees' privacy and restrict their freedom. Is it legal for your employer to fire you for writing a letter to the editor? Or for putting the "wrong" candidate's bumper sticker on your car? If you answered no, prepare to be shocked. Americans assume that their basic rights, such as privacy and freedom of speech, remain in force when they go to work. But what if your boss checked your personal e-mail to see if you were really working over the weekend? Or fired you after discovering you had a disease? Workers' rights advocate Lewis Maltby shares dozens of stories of employees who have been fired or harassed unfairly-but legally. Consider: ?A man denied a job at a retail chain for failing a psychological test that probed his sex life, religious beliefs, even his bathroom habits ?A group of women at a storage company with no legal recourse after discovering a hidden camera installed by their manager in the women's restroom ?A longtime employee dismissed for having a beer after work, because his boss believed drinking was a sin Over the last twenty years, Maltby has heard hundreds of stories just like these. His expose will change the way you think about your workplace. Bosses abuse and take advantage of their employees every day and get away with it. If a worker steals a hundred dollars out of the cash register and gets caught, he will be criminally prosecuted and very possibly sent to prison. If an employer steals a hundred dollars in wages from a worker, or a hundred dollars from every worker in the company, there is virtually no chance of criminal prosecution. There is a silver lining, however. As Maltby shows, there are steps that we all can take to restore our rights in the workplace.

Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis è il romanzo in cui confluisce e si realizza la tumultuosa e fervida personalità del Foscolo: le vicissitudini di... Jacopo rispecchiano la sua biografia, romanticamente esemplare grazie agli elementi passionali che la colorano, al rapporto conflittuale con l’ambiente che lo circonda, all’esilio degli ultimi anni. «Il fascino dell’Ortis, anche per un lettore moderno – scrive Walter Binni – è nella sua natura dirompente, esplosiva, persino scomposta, ma così autentica, ardente, fermentante di motivi colti nella loro potenzialità nascente, nella loro deflagrazione inquieta e a volte sin torbida e farraginosa, vivissima e quanto mai lontana da ogni levigata nitidezza e artistica misura e purezza».

Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity is a revealing probe into the life and times of Mario Moreno, Latin America's most famous film star from... the 1940s to the 1970s. This book helps to illuminate the social and cultural history of twentieth-century Mexico. Cantinflas (Moreno's film persona) was the most popular movie star in Mexican history. A fast-talking, nonsensical character, he helped Mexicans embrace their rich mestizo identity and cope with the difficulties of modernization. For thirty years he served as a "weapon of the weak," satirizing corrupt officials and pompous elites who victimized Mexico's urban poor. This is a valuable text for courses on Mexican history and Latin American film.

Fiftieth Anniversary EditionNeruda was a kind of King Midas. Everything he touched turned to poetry, says Gabriel García Márquez, who also considers... the Chilean Nobel laureate "the greatest poet of the twentieth century, in any language." [The Fragrance of Guava, 1983]. The Canto General, thought by many of Neruda's most prominent critics to be the poet's masterpiece, is the stunning epic of an entire continent and its people. The Canto speaks of the destiny of Latin American peoples and the life of the poet himself. Without question, this is one of the most important and powerful long poems written in the modern period.

The Canto General, thought by many of Neruda's most prominent critics to be the poet's masterpiece, is the stunning epic of an entire continent and its... people.

Fe en disfraz is a timeless novel, and one that should be savored like a strong cup of black coffee and devoured like a feast. I traveled with Mayra... Santos-Febres and have never felt so sheltered as I did when wrapped by her literature and intelligent writing, as warm as she herself is, as warm as the waters of the Caribbean. Fe en disfraz reads like the cure for all ills. Mayra tells us: Time does not exist and all that exists is time, and time, with her, becomes fruity, livable, and it shows us the movement of the stars. Spanish Description: Fe en disfraz es una novela para todos los tiempos y para beberse como una taza de cafe negro y engullirse como un manjar. Viaje con Mayra Santos-Febres y nunca me senti tan arropada tanto por su literatura como por su inteligente escritura, calida como ella misma, calida como el mar del Caribe. Fe en disfraz se lee como un remedio a todos los males. Mayra nos dice: El tiempo no existe y todo lo que existe es tiempo y el tiempo con ella se vuelve frutal, vivible, y nos revela el movimiento de las estrellas.

This book is designer for students who hav had three terms of Chinese and want to read something to reinforce their vocabulary, while at the same time... enjoying a modern style novel.