A guidebook for beating the monotony of the everyday by purposefully cultivating the surprising joys that come from living an off-kilter lifeIt's all too easy to get caught up in the often monotonous nature of our day to day--moving from one rote task to the next, only to rinse and repeat the next day. Weirdness, however, is an easily accessible antidote to these feelings of languishing. The quirky, eccentric, and peculiar can take us out of our normal habits of th...

"[A] lively, reasoned call for the preservation of melancholy in the face of all-too-rampant cheerfulness. . . . Pithy and epigrammatic." — Bookforum"A wicked, wise and cheerfully misanthropic treatise." — Publishers WeeklyWe are addicted to happiness. More than any other generation, Americans today believe in the power of positive thinking. But who says we're supposed to be happy...

Why can't we look away?Whether we admit it or not, we're fascinated by evil. Dark fantasies, morbid curiosities, Schadenfreude: As conventional wisdom has it, these are the symptoms of our wicked side, and we succumb to them at our own peril. But we're still compelled to look whenever we pass a grisly accident on the highway, and there's no slaking our thirst for gory entertainments like horror movies and police procedurals. What makes these spectacles so irresistible?In ...

John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) has long been recognised as one of the seminal films of the sixties, with its revisionary mix of genres including neo-noir, New Wave, and spaghetti western. Its lasting influence can be traced throughout the decades in films like Mean Streets (1973), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Heat (1995), The Limey (1999) and Memento (2000).Eric Wilson's compelling study of the film examines its significance to New...

An in-depth look into the life of Romantic essayist Charles Lamb and the legacy of his workA pioneer of urban Romanticism, essayist Charles Lamb (1775'Äì1834) found inspiration in London's markets, theaters, prostitutes, and bookshops. He prized the city's literary scene, too, where he was a star wit. He counted among his admirers Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His friends valued in his conversation what distinguished his writing style: a highly origi...

Shoot straight from the hip. Tell it like it is. Keep it real.We love these commands, especially in America, because they appeal to what we want to believe: that there's an authentic self to which we can be true. But while we mock Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, we're inventing identities on Facebook, paying thousands for plastic surgeries, and tuning in to news that simply verifies our opinions. Reality bites, after all, and becoming disillusioned is a downer....

A guidebook for beating the monotony of the everyday by purposefully cultivating the surprising joys that come from living an off-kilter lifeIt's all too easy to get caught up in the often monotonous nature of our day to day--moving from one rote task to the next, only to rinse and repeat the next day. Weirdness, however, is an easily accessible antidote to these feelings of languishing. The quirky, eccentric, and peculiar can take us out of our normal habits of th...

The Echo of Silent Screams is the culmination of many years of exhaustive research by Eric Wilson, the elder brother of one of the murdered girls, into what became known as the Gold Coast Hitchhike Murders.But The Echo of Silent Screams is much more than a murder mystery. It opens up the very soul of one of the families involved in this disturbing case, which still remains unsolved over 40 years later.This ebook is from the original book published by the author on this matt...

On the night of July 15, 1903, Nikola Tesla powered up his 190-foot tower in Wardenclyffe on Long Island's north shore. The bolts of energy radiating from the apical dome were visible as far away as New Haven, Connecticut.?This was the first and last time anyone would witness such a display. Three years later, broke and unable to secure further funding, Tesla abandoned the Wardenclyffe tower and his dream of worldwide wireless power. He returned to Manhattan where he promptly suffered a ne...

El protagonista de esta emocionante novela policiaca es Tom Austen, un muchacho canadiense, quien al terminar el curso escolar viaja en el Canadian Express. Este ferrocarril, el de mayor recorrido del mundo, sale diariamente de Montreal y emplea tres días en llegar a su destino, Vancúver.¿Quién será el asesino? ¿Habrá estado Tom tras las pistas correctas?

From the author of Ultimate Level 1: When a bold teenager discovers a strange egg, he becomes the first human in generations to bond with a dragon.Kaen is a typical teenage orphan in Ebonmount—toiling in a quarry for his keep as he yearns for adventure far beyond the confines of his laborious existence. But everything changes when he stumbles upon a bronze egg. From its shell emerges Pammon, a dragon, marking Kaen as the first human in generations to bond with such...

Mike Tyson is a cultural phenomenon: heavyweight boxing champion, author, movie actor, Broadway star, tiger owner, felon, tabloid gossip mainstay. His memoir, Undisputed Truth, was a New York Times bestseller. While no one is disputing the truth he tells in his book, it is clear that he has not told the entire story. That task goes to his one-time best friend, entourage wrangler, and manager, Rory Holloway, in Taming the Beast: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson (written with Eric Wilson), Hol...