This compelling collection of interviews by critic Grünberg examines the unique career of the writer/director, David Cronenberg, who created such commercial sci-fi horror hits as 'Scanners' and 'The Fly', while simultaneously stretching the envelope of popular cinema.

It's not what you say, it's the way that you say it ... There have long been debates about 'correct' pronunciation in the English language, and Britain's most distinguished linguistic expert, David Crystal, is here to set the record straight. Sounds Appealing tells us exactly why, and how, we pronounce words as we do. Pronunciation is integral to communication, and is tailored to meet the demands of the two main forces behind language: intelligibility and identity. Covering phonetics, linguistics and physiology, and with wide-ranging examples from Eliza Doolittle to Winston Churchill, Crystal explores the origins of regional accents: how they are influenced by class and education, and how their peculiarities have changed over time. 'Highly entertaining' Observer 'Crystal's achievement is to make the history of our language a live and lively study.' The Times

BOOKS

The Book Smugglers is the nearly unbelievable story of ghetto residents who rescued thousands of rare books and manuscripts--first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets--by hiding them on their bodies, burying them in bunkers, and smuggling them across borders. It is a tale of heroism and resistance, of friendship and romance, and of unwavering devotion--including the readiness to risk one's life--to literature and art. And it is entirely true. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author's interviews with several of the story's participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, "The Jerusalem of Lithuania." The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi "expert" on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city's great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest. The Germans used forty ghetto inmates as slave-laborers to sort, select, pack, and transport the materials, either to Germany or to nearby paper mills. Based on Jewish, German, and Soviet documents, including diaries, letters, memoirs, and the author's interviews with several of the story's participants, The Book Smugglers chronicles the daring activities of a group of poets turned partisans and scholars turned smugglers in Vilna, "The Jerusalem of Lithuania." The rescuers were pitted against Johannes Pohl, a Nazi "expert" on the Jews, who had been dispatched to Vilna by the Nazi looting agency, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, to organize the seizure of the city's great collections of Jewish books. Pohl and his Einsatzstab staff planned to ship the most valuable materials to Germany and incinerate the rest...

From such films as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and GoodFellas, Martin Scorsese has won a reputation as the most talented filmmaker of his generation. Now, with the director's full cooperation, esteemed critic David Ehrenstein examines every aspect of Scorsese's life and career in penetrating detail. Illustrated with numerous photographs, many rare.

Once our society set aside time for adolescents to grow from children to adults, to become accustomed to their expanding bodies and minds. Now the markers that defined passage—differences in dress, behavior, and responsibilities—have vanished. The institutions that guarded adolescence, such as family and schools, now expect “young adults” to deal with adult issues. Those trends leave teens no time to be teens. All Grown Up and No Place to Go spotlights the pressures on teenagers to grow up quickly. The resulting problems range from common alienation to self-destructive behavior. Quoting teenagers themselves, Elkind shows why adolescence is a time of “thinking in a new key,” and how young people need this time to get used to the social and emotional changes their new thinking brings. Many of his ideas, such as the “imaginary audience” that makes teens so self-conscious, have become seminal in adolescent psychology.Already there are more than 175,000 copies of All Grown Up and No Place to Go in print. In this thoroughly revised edition, Elkind also explores the “post-modern family” in which teenagers are growing up. He helps parents and those who work with youth and understand teens in crucial ways, because the root of so many adolescent frictions is the gap between what teenagers need and what our culture provides.

Sending young people on extraordinary adventures in which they discover their worlds and themselves is one of science fiction's grand traditions.

Rule of Blood: Once they had been humanity's last best hope: a race of genetically engineered killing machines known as the Phaestor and their army of deadly Moktar Dragons. Now, the enemy long vanquished, the Phaestor themselves have become the enemy, seizing control of the galaxy and subjugating all less species -- including humans -- to feed their appetite for terror and blood. On a small, insignificant planet called Thoska-Roole, a ragtag alliance of humans, androids, and bioforms make a last desperate stand against Phaestor domination. Among their numbers are two bounty hunters, a mercenary starship captain, and a disgraced reptilians warrior. As the Phaestor begin a new reign of unprecendented terror, these rebels prepare to strike back against their vampire overlords and bring revolution to the stars.

On the Mines is a re-designed and expanded version of David Goldblatt’s influential book of 1973. Goldblatt grew up in the South African town of Randfontein, which was shaped by the social culture and financial success of the gold mines surrounding it. When these mines started to fail in the mid-sixties Goldblatt began taking photos of them, which form the basis of On the Mines. The book features an essay on the human and political dimensions of mining in South Africa by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, whose writing has long influenced Goldblatt. The new version of the book maintains the original three chapters “The Witwatersrand: a Time and Tailings”, “Shaftsinking” and “Mining Men”, but is otherwise completely updated, in Goldblatt’s words, “to expand the view but not to alter the sense of things”. There are thirty-one new mostly unpublished photos including colour images, eleven deleted images, a postscript by Gordimer to her essay, as well as a text by Goldblatt reflecting on his childhood and the 1973 book.?On the Mines is the first of many titles in an ambitious collaboration between the photographer and Steidl that will publish Goldblatt’s life work in a series of re-prints and new books.

Tired of trying to be confident, positive, and spiritually centered? Now the real you can shine through! You can be happy, productive, and well adjusted while remaining as neurotic as ever. That's the premise of The Happy Neurotic: How Fear and Angst Can Lead To Happiness And Success! by counselor and stand-up comic David Granirer. Granirer states, "Many self-help books promise us wealth, perfect health, and even to reverse the aging process if only we love ourselves, say positive affirmations, and eliminate all negativity. But most of us aren't getting any richer, healthier or younger, and we're starting to feel like idiots as we go around chanting, 'I am a perfect being of love and light' while cutting people off in traffic. Negative emotions are not only impossible to eradicate, they are also keys to our happiness and success." Instead of wasting time and money on futile attempts to become totally confident and relentlessly positive, Granirer's readers learn how to achieve the common sense and attainable reality of the Happy Neurotic - someone who uses negative emotions to create happiness and success and has a sense of humor about it all. The book even includes a special chapter teaching readers how to use humor as a powerful tool for accepting and even celebrating their dysfunctions. According to Granirer, "Everyone is dysfunctional to some degree. This book helps readers make their dysfunctions work for them." This funny and highly irreverent book also challenges many popular New Age teachings. Readers learn why they shouldn't trust the universe, why programming themselves for success often doesn't work, and about negative, fear-driven people who live charmed lives. Counsellor and stand-up comic David Granirer's work teaching comedy to people with mental illness as a way of building confidence and fighting public stigma has been featured by media across North America. He also helps hundreds of organizations use humor to cope with stress and adversity. Granirer lives in Vancouver, Canada. Book jacket.

After losing a loved one, "pay attention to the ways in which your relationship continues." So advised Sarah Horowitz in an interview she gave the day before her unexpected death. In A Cracking of the Heart, David Horowitz explores the legacy of his extraordinary daughter's short life, and narrates his quest for a deeper understanding of the child he lost. A remarkable woman and gifted writer, Sarah was afflicted with a birth condition that, while complicating and ultimately shortening her life, never affected her dreams. From an early age, she displayed inspiring courage in facing her own difficulties and boundless compassion for the underserved and overlooked in many communities, from an autistic niece in her own family to uneducated children in Africa. A Cracking of the Heart chronicles the separation of father and daughter through political and familial conflicts, and their slow reunion. Alternately searing and uplifting, it reconciles what could have been with what is, taking the reader through a father's love, frustration, admiration, and grief, to what lies beyond.

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