David Gates – författare

Peter Jernigan's life is slipping out of control. His wife's gone, he's lost his job and he's a stranger to his teenage son. Worse, his only relief from all this reality - alcohol - is less effective by the day. And when the medicine doesn't work, you up the dose. And when that doesn't work, what then? (Apart from upping the dose again anyway, because who knows?)Jernigan's answer is to slowly turn his caustic wit on everyone around him - his wife Judith, his teenage son Danny, his vulnerable new girlfriend Martha and, eventually, himself - until the laughs have turned to mute horror. But while he's busy burning every bridge back to the people who love him, Jernigan's perverse charisma keeps us all in thrall to the bitter end.Shot through with gin and irony, Jernigan is a funny, scary, mesmerising portrait of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide open - wisecracking all the way.

Known collectively as the 'Great War', for over a decade the Napoleonic Wars engulfed not only a whole continent but also the overseas possessions of the leading European states. A war of unprecedented scale and intensity, it was in many ways a product of change that acted as a catalyst for upheaval and reform across much of Europe, with aspects of its legacy lingering to this very day. There is a mass of literature on Napoleon and his times, yet there are only a handful of scholarly works that seek to cover the Napoleonic Wars in their entirety, and fewer still that place the conflict in any broader framework. This study redresses the balance. Drawing on recent findings and applying a 'total' history approach, it explores the causes and effects of the conflict, and places it in the context of the evolution of modern warfare. It reappraises the most significant and controversial military ventures, including the war at sea and Napoleon's campaigns of 1805-9. The study gives an insight into the factors that shaped the war, setting the struggle in its wider economic, cultural, political and intellectual dimensions.

From Holden Caulfield to Moses Herzog, our best literature has been narrated by malcontents. To this lineage add Peter Jernigan, who views the world with ferocious intelligence, grim rapture, and a chainsaw wit that he turns, with disastrous consequences, on his wife, his teenaged son, his dangerously vulnerable mistress—and, not least of all, on himself. This novel is a bravura performance: a funny, scary, mesmerizing study of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide open—wisecracking all the way.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The author of the highly acclaimed novels Jernigan (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) and Preston Falls (National Book Critics Cirlce Award Finalist) offers up a mordantly funny collection of short stories about the faulty bargains we make with ourselves to continure the high-wire act of living meaningful lives in late twentieth-century America.Populated by highly educated men and women in combat with one another, with substance abuse, and above all with their own relentless self-awareness, the stories in The Wonders of the Invisible World take place in and around New York City, and put urbanism into uneasy conflict with a fleeting dream of rural happiness.  Written with style and ferocious black humor, they confirm David Gates as one of the best-and funniest-writers of our time.From the Trade Paperback edition.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Jernigan introduced David Gates as a novelist of the highest order. "Full of dark truths and biting humor,"  wrote Frederick Exley, "a brilliant novel [that] will be read for a long time."After that blackly comic handbook of self-destruction--whose antihero shoulders up to such crucial American figures as Bellow''s Herzog, Updike''s Harry Angstrom, Heller''s Bob Slocum, Percy''s Binx Bolling and Irving''s Garp--Gates''s new novel investigates the essential truths of a marriage à la mode. Doug and Jean Willis fit the newly classic, recognizable and seemingly normal variety: struggling against a riptide of the daily commute, the mortgages, the latchkey child-rearing and the country house, as well as the hopes and desires from which all of this grew.In accordance with their long-standing agreement, Doug embarks from their Westchester home on a leave of absence from the PR job that had ineluctably become his life, while Jean contends with both her own job and their two children. Over a two-month period he''ll spruce up the family''s alternative universe up north in rural Preston Falls; she''ll deal with her end of the bargain, and her worries about the survival of the family. But then domesticity hits the brick wall of private longings and nightmarish twists of fate.A surprising, comic, horrifying and always engrossing novel, charged with the responsibilities of middle age and with the abiding power of love, however disappointed--told with great artistry, pitch-perfect understanding and fierce compassion."A novel that''s the funniest, sharpest, most strangely exciting book about men and women in a long time."--Tom Prince, MaximFrom the Hardcover edition.

A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me is populated by characters, young, old or somewhere in between, who are broadly knowledgeable and often creative and variously accomplished, whether as doctors, composers, academics or journalists. Terrifyingly self-aware, each one of them carries the full weight of the human condition: parents in assisted-living facilities, too many or too few people in their families and marriages, the ties that bind a sometimes messy knot, age an implacable foe, impulses pulling them away from comfort into distraction or catastrophe. In settings that range across the metropolitan and suburban Northeast, we follow their lives, alternately hilarious and tragic, as they refuse to go gently—even when they’re going nowhere fast. Relentlessly inventive, these eleven stories and novella prove yet again that David Gates is one of our most talented, witty and emotionally intelligent writers.

This book explores the mingling of two rather different perspectives, those of the naval and aeronautical schools of thought, and the impact that they had upon one another in natural, professional and geopolitical settings. To explain the manner in which air power was incorporated into warfare between 1914 and 1945 it studies the deeds of practitioners, the limitations of technology, the realities of combat and the varying institutional dynamics and strategic priorities of the major maritime powers. It is underpinned by an appreciation of the geostrategic setting of the key maritime states, while addressing the challenges of operating in this multifaceted environment and the major technological developments which enabled air power to play an ever greater role in the maritime sphere. The potential for air power to influence warfare in the maritime environment was fully realised during the Second World War and its impact is demonstrated through an analysis of a wide range of the fleet operations and how it was utilised in the defence of trade and sea lanes. As such this book will be of interest to both naval and air power historians and those wanting a fuller perspective on maritime strategy in this period.

This book explores the mingling of two rather different perspectives, those of the naval and aeronautical schools of thought, and the impact that they had upon one another in natural, professional and geopolitical settings. To explain the manner in which air power was incorporated into warfare between 1914 and 1945 it studies the deeds of practitioners, the limitations of technology, the realities of combat and the varying institutional dynamics and strategic priorities of the major maritime powers. It is underpinned by an appreciation of the geostrategic setting of the key maritime states, while addressing the challenges of operating in this multifaceted environment and the major technological developments which enabled air power to play an ever greater role in the maritime sphere. The potential for air power to influence warfare in the maritime environment was fully realised during the Second World War and its impact is demonstrated through an analysis of a wide range of the fleet operations and how it was utilised in the defence of trade and sea lanes. As such this book will be of interest to both naval and air power historians and those wanting a fuller perspective on maritime strategy in this period.

This book explores the mingling of two rather different perspectives, those of the naval and aeronautical schools of thought, and the impact that they had upon one another in natural, professional and geopolitical settings. To explain the manner in which air power was incorporated into warfare between 1914 and 1945 it studies the deeds of practitioners, the limitations of technology, the realities of combat and the varying institutional dynamics and strategic priorities of the major maritime powers. It is underpinned by an appreciation of the geostrategic setting of the key maritime states, while addressing the challenges of operating in this multifaceted environment and the major technological developments which enabled air power to play an ever greater role in the maritime sphere. The potential for air power to influence warfare in the maritime environment was fully realised during the Second World War and its impact is demonstrated through an analysis of a wide range of the fleet operations and how it was utilised in the defence of trade and sea lanes. As such this book will be of interest to both naval and air power historians and those wanting a fuller perspective on maritime strategy in this period.

Throughout the 1980s numerous calls were made for Nato to change its strategy to one in which nuclear weapons played either a much smaller role or none at all. Among proposed alternatives were several so-called "defensive" strategies. This book examines these alternatives.

This book explores the mingling of two rather different perspectives, those of the naval and aeronautical schools of thought, and the impact that they had upon one another in natural, professional and geopolitical settings. To explain the manner in which air power was incorporated into warfare between 1914 and 1945 it studies the deeds of practitioners, the limitations of technology, the realities of combat and the varying institutional dynamics and strategic priorities of the major maritime powers. It is underpinned by an appreciation of the geostrategic setting of the key maritime states, while addressing the challenges of operating in this multifaceted environment and the major technological developments which enabled air power to play an ever greater role in the maritime sphere. The potential for air power to influence warfare in the maritime environment was fully realised during the Second World War and its impact is demonstrated through an analysis of a wide range of the fleet operations and how it was utilised in the defence of trade and sea lanes. As such this book will be of interest to both naval and air power historians and those wanting a fuller perspective on maritime strategy in this period.

Known collectively as the 'Great War', for over a decade the Napoleonic Wars engulfed not only a whole continent but also the overseas possessions of the leading European states. A war of unprecedented scale and intensity, it was in many ways a product of change that acted as a catalyst for upheaval and reform across much of Europe, with aspects of its legacy lingering to this very day. There is a mass of literature on Napoleon and his times, yet there are only a handful of scholarly works that seek to cover the Napoleonic Wars in their entirety, and fewer still that place the conflict in any broader framework. This study redresses the balance. Drawing on recent findings and applying a 'total' history approach, it explores the causes and effects of the conflict, and places it in the context of the evolution of modern warfare. It reappraises the most significant and controversial military ventures, including the war at sea and Napoleon's campaigns of 1805-9. The study gives an insight into the factors that shaped the war, setting the struggle in its wider economic, cultural, political and intellectual dimensions.

The Falklands, at the time of this story, were a little known group of islands miles away from anywhere that most people hadnt even heard of. Of course, nearly everyone has now heard of them and most even have a good idea where they are.Back in the late 60s and early 70s they were a sleepy spot on the map where nothing much happened. They didnt bother anyone and no-one bothered them. For two hundred years nothing much had changed in that respect and the modern world had only just begun to impinge on the islanders way of life. There was no TV and, of course, no internet. Telephone communications to Home, as the UK was called, were limited to a few minutes per day when a particular satellite passed by and then only from a special room in Port Stanley, its capital.The author was pitched into a way of life that was completely unlike anything most Brits ever experience and this book describes his struggle to adapt to a new way of life at the same time as learning how to teach in extraordinary circumstances. The things that happened to him were unusual, often very funny (in retrospect) and his story gives the reader a unique insight to the Falklands at that time, the place and its people.The islands have, of course, changed dramatically since the war of 1982 and the advent of fishing licences, tourism and, latterly, oil exploration have had a major impact, not to mention the presence of thousands of military personnel. The sovereignty row with Argentina rumbles on and the islanders future has a dark cloud looming over the horizon. It is in the hands of politicians outside of their homeland.This book depicts an altogether more innocent, unspoilt and peaceful time.

Peter Jernigan''s life is slipping out of control. His wife''s gone, he''s lost his job and he''s a stranger to his teenage son. Worse, his only relief from all this reality - alcohol - is less effective by the day. And when the medicine doesn''t work, you up the dose. And when that doesn''t work, what then? (Apart from upping the dose again anyway, because who knows?)Jernigan''s answer is to slowly turn his caustic wit on everyone around him - his wife Judith, his teenage son Danny, his vulnerable new girlfriend Martha and, eventually, himself - until the laughs have turned to mute horror. But while he''s busy burning every bridge back to the people who love him, Jernigan''s perverse charisma keeps us all in thrall to the bitter end.Shot through with gin and irony, Jernigan is a funny, scary, mesmerising portrait of a man walking off the edge with his eyes wide open - wisecracking all the way.

A woman moving calamitously into middle-age; a musician taking in a friend with terminal cancer; a failed actor moving to the country: cynical, unreliable, sinking into middle age or alcoholism, dealing with physical decline or mediocrity, Gates''s characters are a dark reflection of our own urban and suburban lives. Terrifyingly self-aware, overcome by the burdens of the human condition, they find their impulses pulling them away from comfort into distraction or catastrophe. But wherever it is they''re going - and sometimes it''s nowhere fast - they won''t go gently.Relentlessly inventive, by turns comical, caustic and tragic (and often all three together) but always moving, the novella and ten short stories which make up A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me reinforce David Gates as ''a true heir to both Raymond Carver and John Cheever.'' (New York Magazine).