197pages. poche. broché. Un prof peut-il conseiller à ses élèves de sauter les pages d'un livre, de ne pas finir un roman et même de ne pas lire ?... Oui, si c'est le seul moyen pour les faire entrer dans le monde magique des livres. C'est en tout cas le parti pris de Daniel Pennac : auteur à succès depuis Au bonheur des ogres jusqu'à Monsieur Malaussène, il est aussi professeur de français, et il a bien compris qu'il ne sert à rien de vouloir forcer les élèves : si on leur donne le droit de sauter les premières pages de description du Père Goriot de Balzac, on leur laisse une chance de se laisser envoûter par Rastignac. Et c'est l'essentiel, car se priver de Balzac, et de tous les autres, c'est passer à côté d'un grand bonheur. Et d'une grande liberté. Redonner aux lecteurs un accès aux textes ; rendre aux textes leur pouvoir de fascination, de subversion, de magie : tel est le credo de ce traité de lecture, qui est en fait un véritable traité d'humanisme. Et qui se lit, bien sûr, "comme un roman". -Karla Manuele

Exploring the paradox of female villainy, this tale of three fascinating women is another peerless display of literary virtuosity by the supremely ... gifted author of Cat's Eye and The Handmaid's Tale. Roz, Charis and Tony all share a wound, and her name is Zenia. Beautiful, smart and hungry, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless, Zenia is the turbulent center of her own perpetual saga. She entered their lives in the sixties, when they were in college. Over the three decades since, she has damaged each of them badly, ensnaring their sympathy, betraying their trust, and treating their men as loot. Then Zenia dies, or at any rate the three women — with much relief — attend her funeral. But as The Robber Bride begins, Roz, Charis and Tony have come together at a trendy restaraunt for their monthly lunch when in walks the seemingly resurrected Zenia...In this consistently entertaining and profound new novel, Margaret Atwood reports from the farthest reaches of the war between the sexes with her characteristic well-crafted prose, rich and devious humor, and compassion.

The #1 New York Times bestselling follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love--an intimate and erudite celebration of love. At the end of her memoir Eat, Pray,... Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian living in Indonesia. The couple swore eternal love, but also swore (as skittish divorce survivors) never to marry. However, providence intervened in the form of a U.S. government ultimatum: get married, or Felipe could never enter America again. Told with Gilbert's trademark humor and intelligence, this fascinating meditation on compatibility and fidelity chronicles Gilbert's complex and sometimes frightening journey into second marriage, and will enthrall the millions of readers who made Eat, Pray, Love a number one bestseller.

Emerging with a varied political sensibility, this book explodes the bourgeois self-indulgence of American culture to give a lambasting critique of its... current global ultra-exploration and political repression. Exploring pressing and complicated social issues, the book incorporates humor, invective, and vigor while analyzing life, beauty, and the defiance of denial and despair.

Collects more than fifty essays written from behind bars on prison life, prison overcrowding, and AIDS in prison, along with an account of the... collaboration between Martin, a prison inmate, and Sussman, his editor on the outside.

Why do some civil wars end in successfully implemented peace settlements while others are fought to the finish? Numerous competing theories address this... question. Yet not until now has a study combined the historical sweep, empirical richness, and conceptual rigor necessary to put them thoroughly to the test and draw lessons invaluable to students, scholars, and policymakers. Using data on every civil war fought between 1940 and 1992, Barbara Walter details the conditions that lead combatants to partake in what she defines as a three-step process--the decision on whether to initiate negotiations, to compromise, and, finally, to implement any resulting terms. Her key finding: rarely are such conflicts resolved without active third-party intervention.Walter argues that for negotiations to succeed it is not enough for the opposing sides to resolve the underlying issues behind a civil war. Instead the combatants must clear the much higher hurdle of designing credible guarantees on the terms of agreement--something that is difficult without outside assistance. Examining conflicts from Greece to Laos, China to Columbia, Bosnia to Rwanda, Walter confirms just how crucial the prospect of third-party security guarantees and effective power-sharing pacts can be--and that adversaries do, in fact, consider such factors in deciding whether to negotiate or fight. While taking many other variables into account and acknowledging that third parties must also weigh the costs and benefits of involvement in civil war resolution, this study reveals not only how peace is possible, but probable.

Steven Frierman wrote this book to educate others how to be fit and stay fit. For the past 18 years he has developed, modified and taught a variety of... courses in higher education emphasizing heath-related fitness. He has taught thousands of students how to exercise properly and have fun in the process. His goals are to motivate individuals to be fit and stay fit forever. This book contains twelve invigorating chapters which can apply to motivating a person to be for for life.Chapter 1: What's Stopping YouChapter 2: Getting Started What's MY MotiveChapter 3: Setting Goals: Be SMAARTChapter 4: Principles of Health-Related FitnessChapter 5: The PlanChapter 6: Developing an Exercise PrescriptionChapter 7: Developing an Exercise Prescription for Muscular FitnessChapter 8: Developing an Exercise Prescription for FlexibilityChapter 9: Eating HealthyChapter 10: Body CompositionChapter 11: Cognitive Strategies: Learning How to Think during ExerciseChapter 12: Managing Your Stress

Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies and racist practices in the 21st century. It disputes... familiar refrains of racial progress, arguing that athletes sit in a contradictory position masked by the logics of new racism and dominant white racial frames. Contributors discuss athletes ranging from Tiger Woods and Serena Williams to Freddy Adu and Shani Davis.Through dynamic case studies, Commodified and Criminalized unpacks the conversation between black athletes and colorblind discourse, while challenging the assumptions of contemporary sports culture. The contributors in this provocative collection push the conversation beyond the playing field and beyond the racial landscape of sports culture to explore the connections between sports representations and a broader history of racialized violence.

Buying (RED) products—from Gap T-shirts to Apple--to fight AIDS. Drinking a “Caring Cup” of coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to support... fair trade. Driving a Toyota Prius to fight global warming. All these commonplace activities point to a central feature of contemporary culture: the most common way we participate in social activism is by buying something. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser have gathered an exemplary group of scholars to explore this new landscape through a series of case studies of “commodity activism.” Drawing from television, film, consumer activist campaigns, and cultures of celebrity and corporate patronage, the essays take up examples such as the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, sex positive retail activism, ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover, and Angelina Jolie as multinational celebrity missionary. Exploring the complexities embedded in contemporary political activism, Commodity Activism reveals the workings of power and resistance as well as citizenship and subjectivity in the neoliberal era. Refusing to simply position politics in opposition to consumerism, this collection teases out the relationships between material cultures and political subjectivities, arguing that activism may itself be transforming into a branded commodity.

In the thirteenth century the Mongols created a vast transcontinental empire that transported skilled artisans from one cultural zone to another. Among... those transported were Muslim textile workers, resettled in China, where they made clothes for the imperial court. In a fascinating account, the author considers the significance of cloth and color in the political and cultural life of the Mongols. Situated within the broader context of the history of the Silk Road, the book will interest not only historians of the Middle East and Asia, but also art historians and textile specialists.