Behind the scenes of a globe-spanning career in freelance journalismWith a Foreword by Tim CahillA Crooked Line celebrates an age when print journalism changed lives and made the world a better place. That era may be winding down, but this perceptive book makes the case for why incisive writing will always matter.Over the course of his 40-year career, Michael Shapiro has reported from more than 20 countries, writing for

Who is the market?Anyone who appreciates creativity or seeks to be creativeFans or the musicians, writers and other creative people interviewed in the bookAnyone who loves music and/or literature and wants to know the stories behind some of the great works of our timesSelf-improvers, seekers, and the intellectually curiousArtists and other creative types including writers, musicians, painters, chefs, scientists, iconoclastsTh...

In A Sense of Place, journalist/travel writer Michael Shapiro goes on a pilgrimage to visit the world's great travel writers on their home turf to get their views on their careers, the writer's craft, and most importantly, why they chose to live where they do and what that place means to them. The book chronicles a young writer’s conversations with his heroes, writers he's read for years who inspired him both to pack his bags to travel and to pick up a pen and write. Michael skillfully coa...

While meaning and purpose are often seen as synonymous, this book argues that they sometimes are in opposition, the search for meaning at times suicidal, and living with purpose life-enhancing and invigorating. No people seemed to search for meaning in their lives more than did the ancient and classical Greeks. They were not content with living simple lives but oftentimes took on gargantuan tasks which resulted in a great deal of upheaval and unpleasantness in their everyday lives, and oft...

The dramatic events of 2020—the presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic, protests for racial justice—affected every corner of American life. What did these events mean for the residents of small towns and cities that are often overlooked by national newspapers? How do local stories change when they are told by journalists with roots in these communities? And what is lost as this kind of coverage disappears?American Deadline brings together dispatches from four longtim...

The dramatic events of 2020—the presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic, protests for racial justice—affected every corner of American life. What did these events mean for the residents of small towns and cities that are often overlooked by national newspapers? How do local stories change when they are told by journalists with roots in these communities? And what is lost as this kind of coverage disappears?American Deadline brings together dispatches from four longtim...

Young bees strike out on their own in a pirate ship in search of treasure.Captain Mark and the rest of the baby bees have the adventure of their lives as they run into a notorious villain bee.Can they get past the villain bee and get the treasure?

This book serves as a basis for the exploration of language in a more systematic way. By surveying the several major divisions of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis, tropology) and explicating the way in which sound and meaning cohere in them, this text lays bare––for students, scholars and advanced readers alike––the lineaments of an understanding of what makes language the sign system par excellence, in the service of its most important function as the instrument of cognition...

This work is a critical intervention into the archive of female identity; it reflects on the ways in which the Central and Eastern European female ideal was constructed, represented, and embodied in communist societies and on its transformation resulting from the political, economic, and social changes specific to the post-communist social and political transitions.During the communist period, the female ideal was constituted as a heroic mother and worker, both a revolutionary and ...

This book’s chapters analyze aspects of urban politics with a combination of critical thinking (influenced by Walter Benjamin, Jacques Ranciere, Henri Lefebvre, and Achille Mbembe, among others) and readings of artistic genres (film, literature, and architecture). The coverage of cities includes, Tokyo, Paris, New York, Nairobi, Boston, Berlin and Hong Kong.

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice occupies a unique place in world culture. As the fictional, albeit iconic, character of Shylock has been interpreted as exotic outsider, social pariah, melodramatic villain and tragic victim, the play, which has been performed and read in dozens of languages, has served as a lens for examining ideas and images of the Jew at various historical moments. In the last two hundred years, many of the play's stage interpreters, spectators, readers and adapters ...

Beatrice Michaels Shapiros book is a memoir of an extraordinary woman who despite decades of hardship and tragedy, including her unremitting devotion to her two developmentally disabled sons, managed to become an accomplished writer of numerous moving and poignant newspaper and magazine articles and books. In a collection of short articles and a few poems, she depicts with a very observing eye, milestones in her life as well as her thoughts and feelings about society. She describes her lif...