Hard-boiled crime fiction doesn't get any better than this, an unforgettable entry in the classic series starring Parker, the deadliest heister around

Richard Stark's Parker novels are the hardest of hard-boiled, classic crime novels where the heists are huge, the body counts are high, and the bad guys usually win. 

The Parker novels have been a huge influence on countless writers and filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, Stephen King, George Pelecanos, Colson Whitehead, Lucy Sante, John Banville, and many more. Their stripped-down language and hard-as-nails amorality create an unforgettable world where the next score could be the big one, but your next mistake could also be your last. There's nothing else like them.

The Mourner is a story of convergence—of cultures and of guys with guns. Hot on the trail of a statue stolen from a fifteenth-century French tomb, Parker enters a world of eccentric art collectors, greedy foreign officials, and shady KGB agents. Hired by a shifty dame who has something he needs, Parker will find out just who intends to bury whom—and who he needs to kill to finish the job.

2004 – Clifford G. Christians Ethics Research Award — The Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research

Kids around the world love Disney animated films, and many of their parents trust the Disney corporation to provide wholesome, moral entertainment for their children. Yet frequent protests and even boycotts of Disney products and practices reveal a widespread unease with the sometimes mixed and inconsistent moral values espoused in Disney films as the company attempts to appeal to the largest possible audience.

In this book, Annalee R. Ward uses a variety of analytical tools based in rhetorical criticism to examine the moral messages taught in five recent Disney animated films—The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, and Mulan. Taking the films on their own terms, she uncovers the many mixed messages they purvey: for example, females can be leaders—but male leadership ought to be the norm; stereotyping is wrong—but black means evil; historical truth is valued—but only tell what one can sell, etc. Adding these messages together, Ward raises important questions about the moral ambiguity of Disney's overall worldview and demonstrates the need for parents to be discerning in letting their children learn moral values and life lessons from Disney films.

Some folks think Brian the mouse is too small. He may be a tough little fella, but they are not sure Brian has what it takes. The Mouse Who Played Football, by former Philadelphia Eagles running back Brian Westbrook Sr. and sports reporter Lesley Van Arsdall, shows how Brian the mouse proves everyone wrong with unyielding confidence that his small size can be his strength.

This charming children’s book, featuring appealing and dynamic illustrations by Mr. Tom, demonstrates how Brian the mouse overcomes what others see as a “big problem.” His determination—as well as speed and toughness on the gridiron—helps him become a star player in high school, college, and eventually, the MFL, the Mouse Football League.

The Mouse Who Played Football, based on Westbrook’s own experiences,is an inspiring story that encourages young readers to believe in themselves and make their unique differences their strengths.

The winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, Rodney Gomez’s collection Mouth Filled with Night employs familiar emblems of Mexican American identity to repeatedly subvert expectations while intensifying the dilemmas of affiliation. The poems run beyond more conventional ideas of agency, identity, and experience, creating a newly invigorated imaginative space. As a collection, Mouth Filled with Night gains particular momentum—a pitched anxiety that slowly grows throughout the volume—to create a poetic experience unique to the chapbook form.

Foreword by Jamie Campbell Naidoo

Get ready to break out of your storytime routine by encouraging children’s natural instincts to move, sing, and play! Unlike traditional storytimes, where children are expected to sit quietly and just watch, music and movement storytimes encourage children to learn by getting inside stories while interacting with others. Research shows that this kind of play stimulates the senses, provides connections to all four lobes of the brain, touches on a variety of intelligences, and heightens social and emotional awareness—all while extending the early literacy practices of Every Child Ready to Read® and preparing children for school. And because there are no crafts to cut out, no snacks to pack, no scripts to memorize, and no story kits to make, it’s one of the simplest, most cost-effective storytime models to implement. Jewell’s complete guide shows the way, offering

• 20 ready-to-use storytime plans tailored to specific age groups, including babies, toddlers, preschool and all-ages programs, a real time-saver for storytime organizers and presenters;
• advice and best practices gleaned from interviews with professionals who specialize in storytimes, music making with children and families, yoga storytime, and drama education; and
• lists of recommended resources, from interactive print books to children’s music and videos available digitally, with tips on choosing the best materials.

An invaluable collection of rare archival sources, Movie Mavens reveals women's essential contribution to the creation of American film culture.

Illuminating and astute, Movie Workers is a first-of-its-kind examination of the unsung women whose invisible work brought British filmmaking to the screen.

A cultural history of the enduring relationship between film spectatorship and intoxicating substances

 

Movies under the Influence charts the entangled histories of moviegoing and mind-altering substances from early cinema through the psychedelic 1970s. Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece examines how the parallel trajectories of these two enduring  aspects of American culture, linked by their ability to influence individual and collective consciousness, resulted in them being treated and regulated in similar ways. Rather than looking at representations of drug use within film, she regards cinema and intoxicants as kindred experiences of immersion that have been subject to corresponding forces of ideology and power. 

Exploring the effects of intoxicants such as caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, and psychedelics on film spectatorship, Szczepaniak-Gillece demonstrates how American movie theaters sought to cultivate a dual identity, presenting themselves as both a place of wholesome entertainment and a shadowy zone of illicit behavior. Movies under the Influence highlights the various legislative, legal, and corporate powers that held sway over the darkened anonymity of theaters, locating the convergence of moviegoing and drug use as a site of mediation and social control in America.

As much as substances and cinema are points where power intervenes, they are also settings of potential transcendence, and Movies under the Influence maintains this paradox as a necessary component of American film history. Recontextualizing a wide range of films, from Hollywood to the avant-garde, this book examines the implicit relationship intoxicants suggest between mass media, spectatorship, and governmental regulation and provides a new angle from which to understand cinema’s lasting role in evolving American culture.

An old Indian woman comforts two young white children she finds lost in the woods and lovingly carries them back to their eager parents. A frontiersman sheds tears over the grave of a Mohican youth, holding hands with the mourning father. According to Laura L. Mielke, such emotionally charged scenes between whites and Indians paradoxically flourished in American literature from 1820 to 1850, a time when the United States government developed and applied a policy of Indian removal. 

Although these “moving encounters,” as Mielke terms them, often promoted the possibility of mutual sympathy between Native Americans and Euro-Americans, they also suggested that these emotional links were inherently unstable, potentially dangerous, and ultimately doomed. At the same time, the emphasis on Indian-white sympathy provided an opportunity for Indians and non-Native activists to voice an alternative to removal and acculturation, turning the language of a sentimental U.S. culture against its own imperial impulse. Mielke details not only how such writers as James Fenimore Cooper and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft forecast the inevitable demise of Indian-white sympathy, but also how authors like Lydia Maria Child and William Apess insisted that a language of feeling could be used to create shared community or defend American Indian sovereignty. In this way, Moving Encounters sheds new light on a wide range of texts concerning the “Indian Question” by emphasizing their engagement with popular sentimental forms and by challenging the commonly held belief that all Euro-American expressions of sympathy for American Indians in this period were fundamentally insincere. While portraits of Indian-white sympathy often prompted cynical rejoinders from parodists, many never lost faith in the power of emotion to overcome the greed and prejudice fueling the dispossession of American Indians.

Considering such factors as artistic intention, institutional deployment, critical interpretation, and popular reception, Alinder provides calibrated readings of the photographs from this period. She uncovers the tension between Dorothea Lange's moving and critical images of the camps and the War Relocation Authority's blindly positive captions. She also analyzes Ansel Adams's attempt to combat negative war propaganda through humanizing photographs of Japanese Americans and locates the limits of such a counternarrative in the midst of a national mobilization against Japan.

Moving Images examines the work of Japanese American photographers operating both during and after the incarceration, including Manzanar inmate Toyo Miyatake, who constructed his own camera to document the complicated realities of camp life for his fellow inmates. More recently, contemporary artists Patrick Nagatani and Masumi Hayashi have used photography to reckon with the legacy of incarceration by journeying to the camp sites and creating photographs that bridge the intergenerational divides between their parents, themselves, and their children.

Illustrated with more than forty photographs, Moving Images reveals the significance of the camera in the process of incarceration as well as the construction of race, citizenship, and patriotism in this complex historical moment.

Embracing a new religion, or leaving one’s faith, usually constitutes a significant milestone in a person’s life. While a number of scholars have examined the reasons why people convert to Islam, few have investigated why people leave the faith and what the consequences are for doing so. Taking a holistic approach to conversion and deconversion, Moving In and Out of Islam explores the experiences of people who have come into the faith along with those who have chosen to leave it—including some individuals who have both moved into and out of Islam over the course of their lives.

Sixteen empirical case studies trace the processes of moving in or out of Islam in Western and Central Europe, the United States, Canada, and the Middle East. Going beyond fixed notions of conversion or apostasy, the contributors focus on the ambiguity, doubts, and nonlinear trajectories of both moving in and out of Islam. They show how people shifting in either direction have to learn or unlearn habits and change their styles of clothing, dietary restrictions, and ways of interacting with their communities. They also look at how communities react to both converts to the religion and converts out of it, including controversies over the death penalty for apostates. The contributors cover the political aspects of conversion as well, including debates on radicalization in the era of the “war on terror” and the role of moderate Islam in conversions.

Moving Islands reveals the international and intercultural connections within contemporary performance from Oceania, focusing on theater, performance art, art installations, dance, film, and activist performance in sites throughout Oceania and in Australia, Asia, North America, and Europe. Diana Looser’s study moves beyond a predictable country-specific or island-specific focus to encompass an entire region defined by diversity and global exchange, showing how performance operates to frame social, artistic, and political relationships across widely dispersed locations. The study also demonstrates how Oceanian performance contributes to international debates about diaspora, indigeneity, urbanization, and environmental sustainability. The author considers the region’s unique cultural and geographic dynamics as she brings forth the paradigm of transpasifika to suggest a way of understanding these intercultural exchanges and connections, with the aim to “rework the cartographic and disciplinary priorities of transpacific studies to privilege the activities of Islander peoples.”

Cape Cod is known for its beaches, throngs of summer visitors, and the activities that accompany seaside living, but it is also home to many kettle ponds, which offer a more tranquil setting. Formed from glaciers breaking apart and so named due to a rounded shape that appears like a kettle, these waterways are home to a diverse array of wildlife, while remaining peaceful and even a bit hidden.

Big enough for a canoeist to feel solitude and serenity, small enough to not appear on large-scale maps, Centerville’s Long Pond (one of seven on the Cape that share this name), consists of fifty-one acres of crystal clear waters, fresh air, and the fish, turtles, waterfowl, ospreys, and otters that call this special place home. In A Moving Meditation, Stephen G. Waller offers an intimate look at the pond’s intriguing natural and human history; its abundant animal life, across the seasons; and the encroaching effects of climate change.

A collection of essays that reinvigorates our understanding of some of Mozart's best-loved works.

One of the world’s most revered composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) wrote works in almost every genre. His life and work continue to fascinate scholars, performers, and music lovers alike. Mozart and His World brings original perspectives to perennially popular topics in Mozart studies. Through wide-ranging essays that address interpretive, biographical, and contextual themes, the volume simultaneously widens and refines our view of Mozart’s oeuvre.

Mozart and His World moves from studies of instrumental music and musicians to the interpretation and reception of Mozart’s operas, and finally to primary sources from the decade or so after Mozart’s death. Across original chapters and several archival documents, Mozart and His World points new ways forward in key areas of Mozart scholarship, including the study of intellectual and stylistic ideas informing his works and of musicians and institutions within his orbit. While the volume reshapes our understanding of some of Mozart’s best-loved works, including The Magic Flute and his other operas, it also probes works that have received less attention, such as his early string quartets, an opera parody, and wind-music culture and arrangements.

The story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s precocity is so familiar as to be taken for granted. In scholarship and popular culture, Mozart the Wunderkind is often seen as belonging to a category of childhood all by himself. But treating the young composer as an anomaly risks minimizing his impact. In this book, Adeline Mueller examines how Mozart shaped the social and cultural reevaluation of childhood during the Austrian Enlightenment. Whether in a juvenile sonata printed with his age on the title page, a concerto for a father and daughter, a lullaby, a musical dice game, or a mass for the consecration of an orphanage church, Mozart’s music and persona transformed attitudes toward children’s agency, intellectual capacity, relationships with family and friends, political and economic value, work, school, and leisure time.
 
Thousands of children across the Habsburg Monarchy were affected by the Salzburg prodigy and the idea he embodied: that childhood itself could be packaged, consumed, deployed, “performed”—in short, mediated—through music. This book builds upon a new understanding of the history of childhood as dynamic and reciprocal, rather than a mere projection or fantasy—as something mediated not just through texts, images, and objects but also through actions. Drawing on a range of evidence, from children’s periodicals to Habsburg court edicts and spurious Mozart prints, Mueller shows that while we need the history of childhood to help us understand Mozart, we also need Mozart to help us understand the history of childhood.