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4 books match the query 'Strange'

cover of In the Rainforest: Report from a Strange, Beautiful, Imperiled World

In the Rainforest

Report from a Strange, Beautiful, Imperiled World

Catherine Caufield

University of Chicago Press, 1986

In the Rainforest takes us to Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, revealing a colorful and bizarre world where fish live on fruit, spiders prey on birds, and violets grow to the size of apple trees.

"I recommend In the Rainforest as scientific journalism at its best, and [Caufield's] book as the one to read to become informed about the tropical crisis. Caufield traveled the world, went to the difficult places, sometimes beautiful and often dispiriting, mastered the important ideas, and talked to an impressive number of people on all sides of the issues. . . . There are villains in abundance: corrupt government agents who aid in the destruction of native tribes, greedy caballero landowners, and even the governmental planners who with the best of intentions rush heedlessly toward the environmental degradation of their own countries."—E. O. Wilson, Science

"The whole book is filled with amazing facts. . . . Moving and informative."—Ellen W. Chu, New York Times Book Review
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cover of The Strange and Terrible Visions of Wilhelm Friess: The Paths of Prophecy in Reformation Europe

The Strange and Terrible Visions of Wilhelm Friess

The Paths of Prophecy in Reformation Europe

Jonathan Green

University of Michigan Press, 2014

Although nearly forgotten today, the prophetic writing of Wilhelm Friess was the most popular work of its kind in Germany in the second half of the sixteenth century. While the author “Wilhelm Friess” was a convenient fiction, his text had a long and remarkable history as it moved from the papal court in fourteenth-century Avignon, to Antwerp under Habsburg oppression, to Nuremberg as it was still reeling from Lutheran failures in the Schmalkaldic War, and then back to Antwerp at the outbreak of the Dutch revolt.

Dutch scholars have recognized that Frans Fraet was executed for printing a prognostication by Willem de Vriese, but this prognostication was thought to be lost. A few scholars of sixteenth-century German apocalypticism have briefly noted the prophecies of Wilhelm Friess but have not studied them in depth. The Strange and Terrible Visions of Wilhelm Friess is the first to connect de Vriese and Friess, as well as recognize the prophecy of Wilhelm Friess as an adaptation of a French version of theVademecum of Johannes de Rupescissa, making these pamphlets by far the most widespread source for Rupescissa’s apocalyptic thought in Reformation Germany. The book explains the connection between the first and second prophecies of Wilhelm Friess and discovers the Calvinist context of the second prophecy and its connection to Johann Fischart, one of the most important German writers of the time.

Jonathan Green provides a study of how textual history interacts with print history in early modern pamphlets and proposes a model of how early modern prophecies were created and transmitted. The Strange and Terrible Visions of Wilhelm Friess makes important contributions to the study of early modern German and Dutch literature, apocalypticism and confessionalization during the Reformation, and the history of printing in the sixteenth century.

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cover of The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist: A Novel

The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist

A Novel

Michael Downs

Acre Books, 2018

In ten provocative stories, Ethan Chatagnier presents us with characters in crisis, people grappling with their own and others’ darkness as they search for glimmers to carry them through difficult times, untenable tasks, uncertain futures. The collection explores with unflinching eloquence the quandaries of conscience posed by the present, but also plunges us into a startlingly prescient “what if?” world, exploring in both realms questions concerning the value of perseverance, art, hope, and heart.
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cover of When the Laughing Stopped: The Strange, Sad Death of Will Rogers

When the Laughing Stopped

The Strange, Sad Death of Will Rogers

John Evangelist Walsh

University of Alaska Press, 2008

The sudden death of renowned American entertainer Will Rogers inspired a national mourning not seen since Lincoln’s death, and it still resonates today. In this intimate and informed recounting, John Evangelist Walsh recalls the events of that day and the plane crash that ended it all.

The plane carrying Rogers and aviator Wiley Post crashed in a lagoon just outside Barrow, Alaska on August 15, 1935. Walsh retells the tragic tale from various angles, primarily alternating between Rogers and Post’s journey and the actions of the two men’s families on that fateful day. In particular, Walsh reveals moving details about the families and their struggle with grief, such as the fact that Post’s daughter was in a stage play about plane crashes at the time of the crash, or how Will Rogers’s daughter Mary never fully recovered from her father’s death and subsequently abandoned her promising acting career.

When the Laughing Stopped is a gripping and poignant retelling of the death of a beloved American legend, and it shines a humanizing light upon a pivotal moment in American history and culture.
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