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Crunching Gravel: A Wisconsin Boyhood in the Thirties

by Robert Peters

No nostalgic tale of the good old days, Robert Peters’s recollections of his adolescence vividly evoke the Depression on a hardscrabble farm near Eagle River: Dad driving the Vilas County Relief truck, Lars the Swede freezing to death on his porch, the embarassment of graduation in a suit from welfare. The hard efforts to put fish and potatoes and blueberries on the table are punctuated by occasional pleasures: the Memorial Day celebration, swimming at Perch Lake, the county fair with Mother’s prizes for jam and the exotic delights of the midway. Peters’s clear-eyed memoir reveals a poet’s eye for rich and stark detail even as a boy of twelve. “Peters misses nothing, from the details of the town’s Fourth of July celebration to the cause and effect of a young cousin’s suicide to the calibrations of racism toward Indians that was so acceptable then. It is a fascinating, unsentimental look at a piece of our past. ”—Margaret E. Guthrie,New York Times Book Review “It’s unlikely that any other contemporary poet and scholar as distinguished has risen from quite so humble beginnings as Robert Peters. Born and raised by semiliterate parents on a subsistence farm in northeastern Wisconsin, Peters lived harrowingly close to the eventual stuff of his poetry—the dependency of humans on animal lives, the inexplicable and ordinary heroism and baseness of people facing extreme conditions, the urgency of physical desire. . . . Sterling childhood memoirs. ”—Booklist “Robert Peters has written a memoir exemplary because he insists on the specific, on the personal and the local. It is also enormously satisfying to read, and it is among the most authentic accounts of childhood and youth I know—a Wisconsin David Copperfield!”—Thom Gunn

Cruithne Mythology and the House of Night

by Pc Cast

From Nyx in the House of Night: Mythology, Folklore, and Religion in the P.C. and Kristin Cast Vampyre Series: P.C. Cast relates her inspiration for the setting of the House of Night and how Scottish and Irish history are woven into the series.

The Cruft of Fiction: Mega-Novels and the Science of Paying Attention (Frontiers of Narrative)

by David Letzler

A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title What is the strange appeal of big books? The mega-novel, a genre of erudite tomes with encyclopedic scope, has attracted wildly varied responses, from fanatical devotion to trenchant criticism. Looking at intimidating mega-novel masterpieces from The Making of Americans to 2666, David Letzler explores reader responses to all the seemingly random, irrelevant, pointless, and derailing elements that comprise these mega-novels, elements that he labels “cruft” after the computer science term for junk code. In The Cruft of Fiction, Letzler suggests that these books are useful tools to help us understand the relationship between reading and attention.While mega-novel text is often intricately meaningful or experimental, sometimes it is just excessive and pointless. On the other hand, mega-novels also contain text that, though appearing to be cruft, turns out to be quite important. Letzler posits that this cruft requires readers to develop a sophisticated method of attentional modulation, allowing one to subtly distinguish between text requiring focused attention and text that must be skimmed or even skipped to avoid processing failures. The Cruft of Fiction shows how the attentional maturation prompted by reading mega-novels can help manage the information overload that increasingly characterizes contemporary life.

Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century

by Simon Dickie

Eighteenth-century British culture is often seen as polite and sentimental--the creation of an emerging middle class. Simon Dickie disputes these assumptions in Cruelty and Laughter, a wildly enjoyable but shocking plunge into the forgotten comic literature of the age. Beneath the surface of Enlightenment civility, Dickie uncovers a rich vein of cruel humor that forces us to recognize just how slowly ordinary human sufferings became worthy of sympathy. Delving into an enormous archive of comic novels, jestbooks, farces, variety shows, and cartoons, Dickie finds a vast repository of jokes about cripples, blind men, rape, and wife-beating. Epigrams about syphilis and scurvy sit alongside one-act comedies about hunchbacks in love. He shows us that everyone--rich and poor, women as well as men--laughed along. In the process, Dickie also expands our understanding of many of the century's major authors, including Samuel Richardson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Tobias Smollett, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen. He devotes particular attention to Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews, a novel that reflects repeatedly on the limits of compassion and the ethical problems of laughter. Cruelty and Laughter is an engaging, far-reaching study of the other side of culture in eighteenth-century Britain.

Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century

by Simon Dickie

Eighteenth-century British culture is often seen as polite and sentimental—the creation of an emerging middle class. Simon Dickie disputes these assumptions in Cruelty and Laughter, a wildly enjoyable but shocking plunge into the forgotten comic literature of the age. Beneath the surface of Enlightenment civility, Dickie uncovers a rich vein of cruel humor that forces us to recognize just how slowly ordinary human sufferings became worthy of sympathy. Delving into an enormous archive of comic novels, jestbooks, farces, variety shows, and cartoons, Dickie finds a vast repository of jokes about cripples, blind men, rape, and wife-beating. Epigrams about syphilis and scurvy sit alongside one-act comedies about hunchbacks in love. He shows us that everyone—rich and poor, women as well as men—laughed along. In the process, Dickie also expands our understanding of many of the century’s major authors, including Samuel Richardson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Tobias Smollett, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen. He devotes particular attention to Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, a novel that reflects repeatedly on the limits of compassion and the ethical problems of laughter. Cruelty and Laughter is an engaging, far-reaching study of the other side of culture in eighteenth-century Britain.

Cruel Optimism

by Lauren Berlant

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life--with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy--despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives "add up to something."Arguing that the historical present is perceived affectively before it is understood in any other way, Berlant traces affective and aesthetic responses to the dramas of adjustment that unfold amid talk of precarity, contingency, and crisis. She suggests that our stretched-out present is characterized by new modes of temporality, and she explains why trauma theory--with its focus on reactions to the exceptional event that shatters the ordinary--is not useful for understanding the ways that people adjust over time, once crisis itself has become ordinary. Cruel Optimism is a remarkable affective history of the present.

Cruel Children in Popular Texts and Cultures (Critical Approaches to Children's Literature)

by Monica Flegel Christopher Parkes

This book explores how alarmist social discourses about 'cruel' young people fail to recognize the complexity of cruelty and the role it plays in child agency. Examining representations of cruel young people in popular texts and popular culture, the collected essays demonstrate how gender, race, and class influence who gets labeled 'cruel' and which actions are viewed as negative, aggressive, and disruptive. It shows how representations of cruel young people negotiate the violence that shadows polite society, and how narratives of cruelty and aggression are used to affirm, or to deny, young people’s agency.

The Crucible of Language

by Vyvyan Evans

From the barbed, childish taunt on the school playground, to the eloquent sophistry of a lawyer prising open a legal loophole in a court of law, meaning arises each time we use language to communicate with one another. How we use language - to convey ideas, make requests, ask a favour, and express anger, love or dismay - is of the utmost importance; indeed, linguistic meaning can be a matter of life and death. In The Crucible of Language, Vyvyan Evans explains what we know, and what we do, when we communicate using language; he shows how linguistic meaning arises, where it comes from, and the way language enables us to convey the meanings that can move us to tears, bore us to death, or make us dizzy with delight. Meaning is, he argues, one of the final frontiers in the mapping of the human mind.

The Crucible

by McDougal-Littell Publishing Staff

A textbook reader for young adults features Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," plus short stories, poems, and essays designed to build reading comprehension.

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

by Kerry Patterson Joseph Grenny Ron Mcmillan Al Switzler Stephen R. Covey

Four cofounders of a corporate consulting firm present their formula for effective communication, based on the trial and error of years spent as corporate trainers. The reader is drilled not only in communication skills but also to recognize bad or shifty modes of communication, to develop integrity in word and deed, and to achieve more effective work habits. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior

by Kerry Patterson Joseph Grenny Ron Mcmillan Al Switzler Tom Peters

The authors of the New York Times bestseller Crucial Conversations show you how to achieve personal, team, and organizational success by healing broken promises, resolving violated expectations, and influencing good behavior Discover skills to resolve touchy, controversial, and complex issues at work and at home--now available in this follow-up to the internationally popular Crucial Conversations. Behind the problems that routinely plague organizations and families, you'll find individuals who are either unwilling or unable to deal with failed promises. Others have broken rules, missed deadlines, failed to live up to commitments, or just plain behaved badly--and nobody steps up to the issue. Or they do, but do a lousy job and create a whole new set of problems. Accountability suffers and new problems spring up. New research demonstrates that these disappointments aren't just irritating, they're costly--sapping organizational performance by twenty to fifty percent and accounting for up to ninety percent of divorces. Crucial Confrontations teaches skills drawn from 10,000 hours of real-life observations to increase confidence in facing issues like: An employee speaks to you in an insulting tone that crosses the line between sarcasm and insubordination. Now what? Your boss just committed you to a deadline you know you can't meet--and not-so-subtly hinted he doesn't want to hear complaints about it. Your son walks through the door sporting colorful new body art that raises your blood pressure by forty points. Speak now, pay later. An accountant wonders how to step up to a client who is violating the law. Can you spell unemployment? Family members fret over how to tell granddad that he should no longer drive his car. This is going to get ugly. A nurse worries about what to say to an abusive physician. She quickly remembers "how things work around here" and decides not to say anything. Everyone knows how to run for cover, or if adequately provoked, step up to these confrontations in a way that causes a real ruckus. That we have down pat. Crucial Confrontations teaches you how to deal with violated expectations in a way that solves the problem at hand, and doesn't harm the relationship--and in fact, even strengthens it. Crucial Confrontations borrows from twenty years of research involving two groups. More than 25,000 people helped the authors identify those who were most influential during crucial confrontations. They spent 10,000 hours watching these people, documented what they saw, and then trained and tested with more than 300,000 people. Second, they measured the impact of crucial confrontations improvements on organizational and team performance--the results were immediate and sustainable: twenty to fifty percent improvements in measurable performance.

Crowning Glories: Netherlandish Realism and the French Imagination during the Reign of Louis XIV

by Harriet Stone

Crowning Glories integrates Louis XIV’s propaganda campaigns, the transmission of Northern art into France, and the rise of empiricism in the eighteenth century – three historical touchstones – to examine what it would have meant for France’s elite to experience the arts in France simultaneously with Netherlandish realist painting. In an expansive study of cultural life under the Sun King, Harriet Stone considers the monarchy’s elaborate palace decors, the court’s official records, and the classical theatre alongside Northern images of daily life in private homes, urban markets, and country fields. Stone argues that Netherlandish art assumes an unobtrusive yet, for the history of ideas, surprisingly dramatic role within the flourishing of the arts, both visual and textual, in France during Louis XIV’s reign. Netherlandish realist art represented thinking about knowledge that challenged the monarchy’s hold on the French imagination, and its efforts to impose the king’s portrait as an ideal and proof of his authority. As objects appreciated for their aesthetic and market value, Northern realist paintings assumed an uncontroversial place in French royal and elite collections. Flemish and Dutch still lifes, genre paintings, and cityscapes, however, were not merely accoutrements of power, acquisitions made by those with influence and money. Crowning Glories reveals how the empirical orientation of Netherlandish realism exposed French court society to a radically different mode of thought, one that would gain full expression in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert.

Crown Of Life - Wilson Knight: Essays In Interpretation Of Shakespeare's Final Plays (University Paperbacks Ser.)

by G. Wilson Knight

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Crowdsourcing (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)

by Daren C. Brabham

A concise introduction to crowdsourcing that goes beyond social media buzzwords to explain what crowdsourcing really is and how it works.Ever since the term “crowdsourcing” was coined in 2006 by Wired writer Jeff Howe, group activities ranging from the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary to the choosing of new colors for M&Ms have been labeled with this most buzz-generating of media buzzwords. In this accessible but authoritative account, grounded in the empirical literature, Daren Brabham explains what crowdsourcing is, what it is not, and how it works.Crowdsourcing, Brabham tells us, is an online, distributed problem solving and production model that leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes set forth by a crowdsourcing organization—corporate, government, or volunteer. Uniquely, it combines a bottom-up, open, creative process with top-down organizational goals. Crowdsourcing is not open source production, which lacks the top-down component; it is not a market research survey that offers participants a short list of choices; and it is qualitatively different from predigital open innovation and collaborative production processes, which lacked the speed, reach, rich capability, and lowered barriers to entry enabled by the Internet.Brabham describes the intellectual roots of the idea of crowdsourcing in such concepts as collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, and distributed computing. He surveys the major issues in crowdsourcing, including crowd motivation, the misconception of the amateur participant, crowdfunding, and the danger of “crowdsploitation” of volunteer labor, citing real-world examples from Threadless, InnoCentive, and other organizations. And he considers the future of crowdsourcing in both theory and practice, describing its possible roles in journalism, governance, national security, and science and health.

Crowdsourcing

by Daren C. Brabham

Ever since the term "crowdsourcing" was coined in 2006 by Wired writer Jeff Howe, group activities ranging from the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary to the choosing of new colors for M&Ms have been labeled with this most buzz-generating of media buzzwords. In this accessible but authoritative account, grounded in the empirical literature, Daren Brabham explains what crowdsourcing is, what it is not, and how it works. Crowdsourcing, Brabham tells us, is an online, distributed problem solving and production model that leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes set forth by a crowdsourcing organization -- corporate, government, or volunteer. Uniquely, it combines a bottom-up, open, creative process with top-down organizational goals. Crowdsourcing is not open source production, which lacks the top-down component; it is not a market research survey that offers participants a short list of choices; and it is qualitatively different from predigital open innovation and collaborative production processes, which lacked the speed, reach, rich capability, and lowered barriers to entry enabled by the Internet. Brabham describes the intellectual roots of the idea of crowdsourcing in such concepts as collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, and distributed computing. He surveys the major issues in crowdsourcing, including crowd motivation, the misconception of the amateur participant, crowdfunding, and the danger of "crowdsploitation" of volunteer labor, citing real-world examples from Threadless, InnoCentive, and other organizations. And he considers the future of crowdsourcing in both theory and practice, describing its possible roles in journalism, governance, national security, and science and health.

Crowd and Rumour in Shakespeare (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama)

by Kai Wiegandt

In this study, the author offers new interpretations of Shakespeare's works in the context of two major contemporary notions of collectivity: the crowd and rumour. The plays illustrate that rumour and crowd are mutually dependent; they also betray a fascination with the fact that crowd and rumour make individuality disappear. Shakespeare dramatizes these mechanisms, relating the crowd to class conflict, to rhetoric, to the theatre and to the organization of the state; and linking rumour to fear, to fame and to philosophical doubt. Paying attention to all levels of collectivity, Wiegandt emphasizes the close relationship between the crowd onstage and the Elizabethan audience. He argues that there was a significant - and sometimes precarious - metatheatrical blurring between the crowd on the stage and the crowd around the stage in performances of crowd scenes. The book's focus on crowd and rumour provides fresh insights on the central problems of some of Shakespeare's most contentiously debated plays, and offers an alternative to the dominant tradition of celebrating Shakespeare as the origin of modern individualism.

Crosswordese: The Weird and Wonderful Language of Crossword Puzzles

by David Bukszpan

This game changing guide to crosswords will improve your skills while exploring the hows, whys, and history of the crossword and its evolution over time, from antiquity to the age of LOL and MINAJ.Crossword puzzles have a language all their own. Packed full of trick clues, trivia about common answers, and crossword trends, Crosswordese is a delightful celebration of the crossword lexicon and its checkered history of wordplay and changing cultural references. Much, much more than a dictionary, this is a playful, entertaining, and educational read for word gamers and language lovers.The perfect present or gift for yourself, Crosswordese will be a hit with crossword puzzlers of all skill levels, word nerds, fans of all varieties of word games, and language enthusiasts.• BEYOND CROSSWORDS: Hooked on crosswords? Now you can discover even more to enjoy about the history and trivia behind the terms and clues you love.• FOR BEGINNERS, EXPERTS, AND WORD NERDS ALIKE: Beginners will find it a boon to their solving skills; veteran crossworders will learn more about the vocabulary they employ every morning; and those interested in language will have plenty of "Aha!" moments.• CROSSWORD PUZZLES INCLUDED! The author has specially created a number of puzzles based on the book's content inside!

The Crossword Century

by Alan Connor

A journalist and word aficionado salutes the 100-year history and pleasures of crossword puzzles Since its debut in The New York World on December 21, 1913, the crossword puzzle has enjoyed a rich and surprisingly lively existence. Alan Connor, a comic writer known for his exploration of all things crossword in The Guardian, covers every twist and turn: from the 1920s, when crosswords were considered a menace to productive society; to World War II, when they were used to recruit code breakers; to their starring role in a 2008 episode of The Simpsons. He also profiles the colorful characters who make up the interesting and bizarre subculture of crossword constructors and competitive solvers, including Will Shortz, the iconic New York Times puzzle editor who created a crafty crossword that appeared to predict the outcome of a presidential election, and the legions of competitive puzzle solvers who descend on a Connecticut hotel each year in an attempt to be crowned the American puzzle-solving champion. At a time when the printed word is in decline, Connor marvels at the crossword's seamless transition onto Kindles and iPads, keeping the puzzle one of America's favorite pastimes. He also explores the way the human brain processes crosswords versus computers that are largely stumped by clues that require wordplay or a simple grasp of humor. A fascinating examination of our most beloved linguistic amusement--and filled with tantalizing crosswords and clues embedded in the text--The Crossword Century is sure to attract the attention of the readers who made Word Freak and Just My Type bestsellers.

Crosswalk Coach for the Common Core State Standards, English Language Arts, Grade 5

by Charles Valle

You've Come to the Right Place for Student Achievement! It's time to be proactive-get to know the newly adopted Common Core State Standards with New York Crosswalk Coach! As new, rigorous student-achievement expectations are introduced across your state, rest assured Crosswalk Coach has you covered. New York Crosswalk Coach clearly identifies how the standards are embedded in the new Common Core. This robust resource provides an easy approach to teaching the CCSS and is a great professional development tool for educators.

Crossroads, The

by L. Ron Hubbard

Explore new worlds. Frustrated with a government that pays him to bury surplus produce in order to "fix" the economy while city folk starve, farmer Eben Smith decides to take matters into his own hands. He piles up his wagon with ripe fruits and vegetables and sets out for the first time to barter his goods in the big city.Being Eben's first city trip and all, the way soon becomes uncertain. But when Eben comes across a strange crossroads, he discovers that he's fallen into a nexus in time. Soon he's bartering a lot more than goods with different cultures in alternative realities . . . accidentally wreaking havoc and chaos in each. ALSO INCLUDES THE FANTASY STORIES "BORROWED GLORY" AND "THE DEVIL'S RESCUE" "Once again another collection of larger than life stories to lose yourself for a couple of hours." --Gil T's Pleasure Blog* An International Book Awards Finalists

The Crossroads of American History and Literature

by Philip F. Gura

The Crossroads of American History and Literature collects two decades' worth of the best-known essays of Philip F. Gura. Beginning with a definitive overview of studies of colonial literature, Gura ranges through such subjects in colonial American history as the intellectual life of the Connecticut River Valley, Cotton Mather's understanding of political leadership, and the religious upheavals of the Great Awakening. In the nineteenth century, he visits such varied topics as the history of print culture in rural communities, the philological interests of the Transcendentalist Elizabeth Peabody, the craft and business of the early Amerian music trades, and Thoreau's interest in exploration literature and in the Native American. Displaying remarkable sophistication in a variety of fields that, taken together, constitute the heart of American Studies, this collection illustrates the complexity of American cultural history.

Crossroads in Literature and Culture (Second Language Learning and Teaching)

by Jacek Fabiszak Bartosz Wolski Ewa Urbaniak-Rybicka

The book contains a selection of papers focusing on the idea of crossing boundaries in literary and cultural texts composed in English. The authors come from different methodological schools and analyse texts coming from different periods and cultures, trying to find common ground (the theme of the volume) between the apparently generically and temporarily varied works and phenomena. In this way, a plethora of perspectives is offered, perspectives which represent a high standard both in terms of theoretical reflection and in-depth analysis of selected texts. Consequently, the volume is addressed to a wide scope of both scholars and students working in the field of English and American literary and cultural studies; furthermore, it will be of interest also to students interested in theoretical issues linked with investigations into literature and culture.

Crossroads: Classic Themes in Young Adult Literature

by Robert Cormier

A compilation of stories and poems from all types of writing for young adults.

Crossroads: Creative Writing in Four Genres

by Diane Thiel

In Crossroads, a wealth of exercises and rich diversity of models address the elements of writing fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and drama while developing an individual's writing skills. Clear, concise discussions of particular techniques of creative writing are followed by practice of these individual techniques. Potent, vital models are offered in an extensive anthology of classic and contemporary readings.

Crossover Preaching: Intercultural-Improvisational Homiletics in Conversation with Gardner C. Taylor (Strategic Initiatives in Evangelical Theology)

by Jared E. Alcántara

As society becomes more culturally diverse and globally connected, churches and seminaries are rapidly changing. And as the church changes, preaching must change too. Crossover Preaching proposes a way forward through conversation with the "dean of the nation?s black preachers," Gardner C. Taylor, senior pastor emeritus of Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. In this richly interdisciplinary study, Jared E. Alcántara argues that an analysis of Taylor's preaching reveals an improvisational-intercultural approach that recovers his contemporary significance and equips U. S. churches and seminary classrooms for the future. Alcántara argues that preachers and homileticians need to develop intercultural and improvisational proficiencies to reach an increasingly intercultural church. Crossover Preaching equips them with concrete practices designed to help them cultivate these competencies and thus communicate effectively in a changing world.

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