Gregory Brown - Böcker

“In The Lowering Days Gregory Brown gives us a lush, almost mythic portrait of a very specific place and time that feels all the more universal for its singularity. There’s magic here.” —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls and Chances AreA promising literary star makes his debut with this emotionally powerful saga, set in 1980s Maine, that explores family love, the power of myths and storytelling, survival and environmental exploitation, and the ties between cultural identity and the land we live onIf you paid attention, you could see the entire unfolding of human history in a story . . .Growing up, David Almerin Ames and his brothers, Link and Simon, believed the wild patch of Maine where they lived along the Penobscot River belonged to them. Running down the state like a spine, the river shared its name with the people of the Penobscot Nation, whose ancestral territory included the entire Penobscot watershed—the land upon which the Ames family eventually made their home. The brothers’ affinity for the natural world derives from their iconoclastic parents, Arnoux, a romantic artist and Vietnam War deserter who builds boats by hand, and Falon, an activist journalist who runs The Lowering Days, a community newspaper which gives equal voice to indigenous and white issues. But the boys’ childhood reverie is shattered when a bankrupt paper mill, once the Penobscot Valley’s largest employer, is burned to the ground on the eve of potentially reopening. As the community grapples with the scope of the devastation, Falon receives a letter from a Penobscot teenager confessing to the crime—an act of justice for a sacred river under centuries of assault. For the residents of the Penobscot Valley, the fire reveals a stark truth. For many, the mill is a lifeline, providing working class jobs they need to survive. Within the Penobscot Nation, the mill is a bringer of death, spewing toxic chemicals and wastewater products that poison the river’s fish and plants. As the divide within the community widens, the building anger and resentment explodes in tragedy, wrecking the lives of David and those around him. Evocative and atmospheric, pulsating with the rhythms of the natural world, The Lowering Days is a meditation on the flow and weight of history, the power and fragility of love, the dangerous fault lines underlying families, and the enduring land where stories are created and told.

This volume focuses on the famous philosophical correspondence between the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, writing in the final months of his life, and the English philosopher and cleric Samuel Clarke, as well as the correspondence between Leibniz and Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, future Princess of Wales and Queen Consort of England, who played a significant role in the correspondence as both mediator of, and commentator on, the exchanges been Leibniz and Clarke. It provides a complete reproduction of Samuel Clarke's 1717 edition of his correspondence with Leibniz, as well as original language texts (in French and Latin) and English translations of the extant correspondence between Leibniz and Caroline from 1714 to 1716, as well as many of the letters exchanged between Leibniz and various correspondents during the period of the correspondence with Clarke. Many of the original language documents are here published and translated into English for the first time.Gregory Brown's introduction places the letters in historical and personal context. The first part discusses the correspondence and developing relationship between Caroline and Leibniz. This encompasses a period immediately leading up to the ascension of Caroline's father-in-law, Georg Ludwig, Elector of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (Hanover), to the throne of England as George I following the death of Queen Anne, as well as Caroline's ascension to the position of Princess of Wales and subsequent relocation to England, Leibniz's correspondence with Clarke, mediated by Caroline, and Leibniz's death in 1716. The second part of the introduction discusses the main themes of the correspondence between Leibniz and Clarke and highlights the importance and influence of Caroline in her role as mediator of the correspondence.

Gregory S. Brown's A Field of Honor: The Identities of Writers, Court Culture and Public Theater in the French Intellectual Field from Racine to the Revolution offers a multilevel study of the intellectual, social, and institutional contexts of dramatic authorship and the world of playwrights in 18th-century Paris. Brown deftly interweaves research in archival and printed materials, case studies of individual authorial strategies, the rich, often contentious historiography on the French Enlightenment and contemporary cultural theory and criticism. Drawing on a sophisticated array of recent studies, Brown positions his work against and between the grain of alternative approaches and interpretations. He combines scholarship on the history of the book with analyses of political culture and cultural identity, leaving the reader with a strong and revealing appreciation for the tensions and crosscurrents staged at the center of the 18th-century "republic of letters."

Writing code is the easy part of a software developer s work. With this practical book will help you explore the other 90% of the job, from requirements discovery and rapid prototyping to business analysis and designing for maintainability.Culled from advice in his "Programming Beyond Practices" newsletter, author and industry professional Greg Brown takes you through topics such as effective code reviews, quality regression testing, designing for reversability, monitoring at the code, infrastructure, business levels, rapid prototyping, communications skills, defining critical paths, dealing with technical debt, and more."

With a career spanning more than forty years, Barbara Kopple (b. 1946) long ago established herself as one of the most prolific and award-winning American filmmakers of her generation. Her projects have ranged from labor union documentaries to fictional feature films to an educational series for kids on the Disney Channel. Through it all, Kopple has generously made herself available for a great many print and broadcast interviews. The most revealing and illuminating of these are brought together in this collection.Here, Kopple explains her near-constant struggles to raise money (usually while her films are already in production) and the hardships arising from throwing her own money into such projects. She makes clear the tensions between biases, objectivity, and fairness in her films. Her interviewers raise fundamental questions. What is the relationship between real people in documentaries and characters in fictional films? Why does she embrace a cinéma vérité style in some films but not others? Why does she seem to support gun ownership in Harlan County, U.S.A., only to take a decidedly more neutral view of the issue in her film Gun Fight?Kopple's concern for people facing crises is undeniable. So is the affection she has for her more famous subjects—Woody Allen playing a series of European jazz concerts, Gregory Peck on tour, and the Dixie Chicks losing a fan base but making a fresh start.

With a career spanning more than forty years, Barbara Kopple (b. 1946) long ago established herself as one of the most prolific and award-winning American filmmakers of her generation. Her projects have ranged from labor union documentaries to fictional feature films to an educational series for kids on the Disney Channel. Through it all, Kopple has generously made herself available for a great many print and broadcast interviews. The most revealing and illuminating of these are brought together in this collection.Here, Kopple explains her near-constant struggles to raise money (usually while her films are already in production) and the hardships arising from throwing her own money into such projects. She makes clear the tensions between biases, objectivity, and fairness in her films. Her interviewers raise fundamental questions. What is the relationship between real people in documentaries and characters in fictional films? Why does she embrace a cinéma vérité style in some films but not others? Why does she seem to support gun ownership in Harlan County, U.S.A., only to take a decidedly more neutral view of the issue in her film Gun Fight?Kopple's concern for people facing crises is undeniable. So is the affection she has for her more famous subjects--Woody Allen playing a series of European jazz concerts, Gregory Peck on tour, and the Dixie Chicks losing a fan base but making a fresh start.

This volume brings together a number of original articles by leading Leibniz scholars to address the meaning and significance of Leibniz’s notions of compossibility and possible worlds. In order to avoid the conclusion that everything that exists is necessary, or that all possibles are actual, as Spinoza held, Leibniz argued that not all possible substances are compossible, that is, capable of coexisting. In Leibniz’s view, the compossibility relation divides all possible substances into disjoint sets, each of which constitutes a possible world, or a way that God might have created things. For Leibniz, then, it is the compossibility relation that individuates possible worlds; and possible worlds form the objects of God’s choice, from among which he chooses the best for creation. Thus the notions of compossibility and possible worlds are of major significance for Leibniz’s metaphysics, his theodicy, and, ultimately, for his ethics. Given the fact, however, that none ofthe approaches to understanding Leibniz’s notions of compossibility and possible words suggested to date have gained universal acceptance, the goal of this book is to gather a body of new papers that explore ways of either refining previous interpretations in light of the objections that have been raised against them, or ways of framing new interpretations that will contribute to a fresh understanding of these key notions in Leibniz’s thought.

This volume brings together a number of original articles by leading Leibniz scholars to address the meaning and significance of Leibniz’s notions of compossibility and possible worlds. In order to avoid the conclusion that everything that exists is necessary, or that all possibles are actual, as Spinoza held, Leibniz argued that not all possible substances are compossible, that is, capable of coexisting. In Leibniz’s view, the compossibility relation divides all possible substances into disjoint sets, each of which constitutes a possible world, or a way that God might have created things. For Leibniz, then, it is the compossibility relation that individuates possible worlds; and possible worlds form the objects of God’s choice, from among which he chooses the best for creation. Thus the notions of compossibility and possible worlds are of major significance for Leibniz’s metaphysics, his theodicy, and, ultimately, for his ethics. Given the fact, however, that none ofthe approaches to understanding Leibniz’s notions of compossibility and possible words suggested to date have gained universal acceptance, the goal of this book is to gather a body of new papers that explore ways of either refining previous interpretations in light of the objections that have been raised against them, or ways of framing new interpretations that will contribute to a fresh understanding of these key notions in Leibniz’s thought.