«Probabilmente nessuno nella storia dello show business americano può vantare una parabola artistica paragonabile a quella di John Waters. E del resto nessun altro è stato in grado di passare dai film low budget che facevano inorridire i critici per il disgusto alle retrospettive celebrative al British Film Institute, dagli spettacoli di mezzanotte nei teatrini più malfamati alla conquista dei palchi di Broadway, dalle espulsioni a scuola a tenere discorsi motivazionali ai laureati nelle università più prestigiose. John Waters negli USA oggi è una leggenda,un'icona culturale tale da essere citato in film, spettacoli TV, campagne di moda o rappresentato in forma di cartoon in un episodio dei Simpson. L'uomo che ha scoperto e reso una star la drag queen Divine, che William Burroughs ha definito 'il Papa del trash', che si è affermato prima come regista underground, poi come artista visivo nelle gallerie di mezzo mondo e infine come scrittore di best seller (inanellando tre carriere di successo, una dopo l'altra) in questo libro ha distillato tutta la sua esperienza in una serie di interventi fulminanti. Il Signor So-tutto-io ci spiega perché non bisogna avere paura del successo, come rispondere quando Hollywood chiama, come scegliere le battaglie civili per cui valga la pena combattere, quanto sia meglio avere un figlio di plastica invece che uno in carne e ossa, cosa significhi sperimentare con le droghe dopo i settant'anni... Con una onestà disarmante e una carrellata di battute da lacrime agli occhi, un testo che può essere preso tanto come una raccolta di saggi di raffina

In 1981, at Bermondsey Market in London, Sean Sexton, the Irish-born photographic collector, chanced upon the gelatin silver prints of photographer Charles Jones. Dating from the turn of the century, these beguiling studio “portraits” of tulips and sunflowers, onions and turnips, plums and pears are skillfully executed and startling in their originality. Shot as close-ups, with long exposure and spare composition, the works anticipate by decades the later achievements of modernist masters.This volume presents Jones’s photography in sections devoted to vegetables, flowers, and fruit, with captions taken from Jones’s own identifications, written by hand on the back of the prints. Renowned writer and restaurateur Alice Waters describes the simple beauty of the photographs in the preface. Robert Flynn Johnson contextualizes the work in the still life tradition and pieces together the fragmentary evidence about the life of this mysterious figure, who trained as a gardener and worked on a number of private estates, but who left no notes or diaries to explain why he photographed the plants he saw every day. The perfect antidote to appetites jaded by processed foods and late twentieth-century consumerism, the legacy of Charles Jones is a reminder of the bountiful riches of nature.

John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads “I’m Not Psycho,” he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?
Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker’s unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette.
Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion—and a celebration of America’s weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.

In the ocean, sharks are near the top of the food chain. Sharks have the same five senses as humans do, but they have an extra sixth sense that makes them especially deadly hunters. What is this sense and how does a shark use all six senses to track down prey? Read and find out! With colorful illustrations from Bob Barner and engaging text from John F. Waters,Sharks Have Six Senses is a fascinating look into one of the most powerful predators in the sea.

Featuring rich marine-biology vocabulary bolded throughout the text, this book also includes a Find Out More section with additional shark facts and web research prompts about shark conservation efforts. Both the text and the artwork were vetted for accuracy by Dr. George H. Burgess, director of the Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

This is a Level 2 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out, which means the book explores more challenging concepts for children in the primary grades and supports the Common Core Learning Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. Let's-Read-And-Find-Out is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.

In the ocean, sharks are near the top of the food chain. Sharks have the same five senses as humans do, but they have an extra sixth sense that makes them especially deadly hunters. What is this sense and how does a shark use all six senses to track down prey? Read and find out! With colorful illustrations from Bob Barner and engaging text from John F. Waters,Sharks Have Six Senses is a fascinating look into one of the most powerful predators in the sea.

Featuring rich marine-biology vocabulary bolded throughout the text, this book also includes a Find Out More section with additional shark facts and web research prompts about shark conservation efforts. Both the text and the artwork were vetted for accuracy by Dr. George H. Burgess, director of the Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

This is a Level 2 Let's-Read-and-Find-Out, which means the book explores more challenging concepts for children in the primary grades and supports the Common Core Learning Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. Let's-Read-And-Find-Out is the winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Outstanding Science Series.

Inspired by James McNeill Whistler’s famous Peacock Room, contemporary painter Darren Waterston creates his own decadent interpretation in a major installation at MASS MoCA. Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre is a contemporary reimagining of James McNeill Whistler’s decorative masterpiece Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room—originally a dining room in the London mansion of shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. In 1876 and 1877, Whistler transformed the space with painted leather walls, gilded shutters, and a ceiling reflecting the coppery golds and brilliant blues of a peacock’s plumage. Waterston reconstructs the historical room as a sumptuous ruin, replete with reinterpretations of Whistler’s paintings and 250 hand-painted vessels. This title features all-new photography of Whistler’s and Waterston’s rooms, accompanied by essays by their curators and a scholar of patronage.

The publication of The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy is a literary event that marks the first time all of James Purdy’s short stories—fifty-six in number, including seven drawn from his unpublished archives—have been collected in a single volume. As prolific as he was unclassifiable, James Purdy was considered one of the greatest—and most underappreciated—writers in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. Championed by writers as diverse as Dame Edith Sitwell, Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, Carl Van Vechten, John Cowper Powys, and Dorothy Parker, Purdy’s vast body of work has heretofore been relegated to the avant-garde fringes of the American literary mainstream.

His unique form and variety of style made the Ohio-born Purdy impossible to categorize in standard terms, though his unique, mercurial talent garnered him a following of loyal readers and made him—in the words of Susan Sontag—“one of the half dozen or so living American writers worth taking seriously.' Purdy’s journey to recognition came with as much outrage and condemnation as it did lavish praise and lasting admiration. Some early assessments even dismissed his work as that of a disturbed mind, while others acclaimed the very same work as healing and transformative. Purdy's fiction was considered so uniquely unsettling that his first book, Don't Call Me by My Right Name, a collection of short stories all reprinted in this edition, had to be printed privately in the United States in 1956, after first being published in England.

Best known for his novels Malcolm, Cabot Wright Begins, Jeremy's Version, and Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Purdy captured an America that was at once highly realistic and deeply symbolic, a landscape filled with social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love, characterized by his dark sense of humor and unflinching eye. Love, disillusionment, the collapse of the family, ecstatic longing, sharp inner pain, and shocking eruptions of violence pervade the lives of his characters in stories that anticipate both 'David Lynch and Desperate Housewives' (Guardian). In 'Color of Darkness,' for example, a lonely child attempts to swallow his father's wedding ring; in 'Eventide,' the anguish of two sisters over the loss of their sons is deeply felt in the summer heat; and in the gothic horror of 'Mr. Evening,' a young man is hypnotized and imprisoned by a predatory old woman. These stories and many others, both haunting and hilarious, form a canvas of deep desperation and immanent sympathy, as Purdy narrates 'the inexorable progress toward disaster in such a way that it's as satisfying and somehow life-affirming as progress toward a happy ending' (Jonathan Franzen).

It may have taken over fifty years, but American culture is finally in sync with James Purdy. As John Waters writes in his introduction, Purdy, far from the fringe, has 'been dead center in the black little hearts of provocateur-hungry readers like myself right from the beginning.'

John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads “I’m Not Psycho,” he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash?
Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker’s unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette.
Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion—and a celebration of America’s weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.

Ireland today stands at a defining moment. The prosperity of the Celtic Tiger years has given way to the sudden crash, the turbulence of the euro crisis, and the loss of our sovereignty to the faceless technocrats of Europe and the IMF. Our leaders seem impotent and rage, bewilderment and despair have swept through Irish society.

Was It For This? delves into the Irish psyche to answer the questions: What happened to our hopes and dreams? What is at the heart of the sense of betrayal that we feel? In the rush to modernity, did we throw away everything of true value? Have we lost the ideals of nationhood and patriotism set out by those who dreamt of the Irish Republic?

John Waters' remarkable new book sweeps through the pages of our recent history to get to the heart of our political, social and existential identity crisis. Ranging across a vast canvas, Was It For This? argues that the Celtic Tiger was built on a collective delusion, and that the seeds of its destruction were sown many years before it even began, when we exchanged our colonial shackles for a no-less destructive dependency for short-term gain. Ireland's sovereignty was given up long before the IMF came to town.

Along the way, Waters ponders our love/hate relationship with Fianna Fáil; the undercurrents that ran through the 2011 presidential election; why our political leaders and commentators have clung onto the remnants of 1960s revolutionary fervour long after the revolution was won; how our denial of an authoritative father figure has led to a leaderless 'sibling society'; the emptiness of our 'youth culture' and the suppression of real thought and discussion through cynicism and irony; and why we have lost the very language that once enabled us to speak of 'Ireland' with pride.

Details the epic struggle between the mighty Chinese dynasties and their Mongol foes Based on first class research and told in accessible, compelling style Thrilling tale culminating in the Ming revolution and the Mongol's expulsion from China

The publication of The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy is a literary event that marks the first time all of James Purdy’s short stories—fifty-eight in number, including seven drawn from his unpublished archives—have been collected in a single volume. As prolific as he was unclassifiable, James Purdy was considered one of the greatest—and most underappreciated—writers in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. Championed by writers as diverse as Edward Albee, Gertrude Stein, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, as well as Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Lethem, Purdy’s vast body of work has heretofore been relegated to the avant-garde fringes of the American literary mainstream.

During his lifetime, the Ohio-born Purdy was all too often marginalized as only a 'gay author' with themes too dark and scabrous for popular consumption, though his unique, mercurial talent garnered him a cult following and made him—in the words of Susan Sontag—'one of the half dozen or so living American writers worth taking seriously.' Purdy’s status as a literary outlaw earned him as much outrage and condemnation as lasting admiration, with some even classifying his work as psychotic—the description 'mentally insane' was included in one rejection. Purdy’s fiction was considered so dangerous—and not just for its homoerotic content— that his first book, 63: Dream Palace, a collection of short stories all reprinted in this edition, had to be printed privately in the United States in 1956, after first being published in England.

Best known for his novels Malcolm, Cabot Wright Begins, and Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Purdy captured an America that was at once highly realistic and deeply symbolic, a landscape filled with social outcasts living in crisis and longing for love and characterized by his dark sense of humor and jaundiced eye. Sexual obsession, disillusionment, ecstatic longing, sharp inner pain, and shocking eruptions of violence pervade the lives of his characters in stories that anticipate both 'David Lynch and Desperate Housewives' (Guardian). In 'Color of Darkness,' for example, a lonely child attempts to swallow his father’s wedding ring; in 'Sermon,' a preacher tells his flock their lives are hopeless; in the gothic horror of 'Mr. Evening,' a young man is hypnotized and imprisoned by an predatory old woman; and in the never-before-published 'The Pupil,' the line between the seducer and the seduced is blurred between a gym coach and his student. These stories and many others, both haunting and hilarious, form a canvas of both deep desperation and immanent sympathy, as Purdy narrates 'the inexorable progress toward disaster in such a way that it’s as satisfying and somehow life-affirming as progress toward a happy ending' (Jonathan Franzen).

It may have taken over fifty years, but American culture is finally catching up to James Purdy. As John Waters writes in his introduction, Purdy, far from the fringe, has 'been dead center in the black little hearts of provocateur-hungry readers like myself right from the beginning.'