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Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Boll's powerful novel about a woman
terrorized by the media
In an era in which journalists will stop at nothing to break a
story, Henrich Boll's "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" has taken
on heightened relevance. A young woman's association with a hunted
man makes her the target of a journalist determined to grab
headlines by portraying her as an evil woman. As the attacks on her
escalate and she becomes the victim of anonymous threats, Katharina
sees only one way out of her nightmare. Turning the mystery genre
on its head, the novel begins with the confession of a crime,
drawing the reader into a web of sensationalism, character
assassination, and the unavoidable eruption of violence.
How an elite cabal rewrote the American dream for their gain - and
left the rest of world behind. Evil Geniuses is the secret history
of how, over the last half century, from even before Ronald Reagan
through Donald Trump, America has sharply swerved away from its
dream of progress for the many to a system of unfettered profit and
self-interest for the few. As the social liberation of the 1960s
finally ended in the chaos of Vietnam and Watergate, a cabal of
rich industrialists, business chiefs, wide-eyed libertarians and
right-wing economic radicals were waiting, determined to claw back
everything they saw as rightfully theirs. Largely out of sight,
they rapidly built and funded a new empire of think tanks and
academic institutions and professional organisations, lobbying and
political groups, using them to transform politics, media, finance,
the legal system and US laws to reinvent and control the political
economy. A throwback to the robber barons of a century earlier,
they sold the remade system to the people as a nostalgic return to
traditional American values. Within a decade, America's flourishing
forward-thinking vision was incarcerated by the unchecked financial
accumulation and political power of the super-rich. Now, the
moneymen are running the show. In this hugely entertaining and
deeply researched cultural and economic expose, New York Times
bestselling author Kurt Andersen maps the rich history of intricate
networks, unlikely connections and dark truths which are
controlling a nation, revealing how on earth America got to where
it is now - and what it might do to win its progressive future
back.
You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts Fantasy
is the USA's primary product. From the Pilgrim Fathers onward
America has been a place where renegades and freaks came in search
of freedom to create their own realities with little objectively
regulated truth standing in their way. The freedom to invent and
believe whatever the hell you like is, in some ways, an unwritten
constitutional right. But, this do-your-own-thing freedom also is
the driving credo of America's current transformation where the
difference between opinion and fact is rapidly crumbling. So how
did we get to this weird pseudo-reality, where science and
objective facts are dismissed in favour of opinions and wild
speculation, or indeed, fantasies? The post truth, fake news,
free-for-all mentality isn't exactly a new phenomenon. If you want
to understand Trump's America, how the lines between reality and
illusion have become dangerously blurred, you have to go back to
the very beginning and take a dizzying road trip across five
centuries of crackpot delusion and make-believe from Salem to
Scientology. Fantasyland is a journey that connects the dots
between crazed franchises of true believers - a rich freak show
tapestry from Mormons to Flat-Earthers and satanic panic, new age
quacks to anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists of every stripe,
creationists to climate change deniers, UFO-obsessives to
gun-toting libertarians, showmen hucksters from P T Barnum to Trump
himself, all topped off with a dangerous dose of anti-government
paranoia and pseudoscience. Along the way, New York Times
bestselling author Kurt Andersen has created a unique and raucous
history of America and a new paradigm for understanding our
post-factual world.
Ever wanted to be that fly on the wall? To listen in on
conversations that were meant to be intimate, private affairs? To
overhear, verbatim, the words of famous entertainers, distinguished
politicians, princes, potentates, and petty criminals? Welcome to
an eavesdropper's jamboree, where you can revel in the real,
unexpurgated words of real people in all their astonishing,
appalling, and hilarious entirely - taken from sources like
transcripts of testimony that was sealed, depositions that had been
buried, recordings of exchanges that were cut from the official
broadcasts, conversations considered so confidential, so
off-the-record, so privileged and personal that we thought, Hey,
why not share them with the whole world? Here is: Michael Jackson's
housekeeper describing life chez Jacko; Prince Charles telling his
lover his fondest hopes regarding reincarnation; pickup lines from
Clarence Thomas; Senators Bob Dole and Alan Simpson trying to reach
out and touch Saddam Hussein; Tommy Lasorda revealing what managers
really say to pitchers out on the mound; Spike Lee on the
importance of higher education; tobacco executives who can't quite
make the connection between smoking and lung cancer; and lots more,
word for regrettable word - in short, a feast of the famous and
infamous caught with their guards down and their mikes on.
How did Richard Ford's cat influence his work as a novelist? How is
Chuck Close's portraiture driven by his inability to remember
faces? What pivotal moment helped Rosanne Cash understand the
healing power of the stage? Creativity is an elusive subject. We
enjoy its fruits-movies, novels, paintings, songs-but rarely are we
privy to what happens in the creative process. In "Spark", Julie
Burstein traces the roots of some of the twenty-first century's
most influential and creative thinkers, including Joyce Carol
Oates, Yo-Yo Ma, David Milch, Isabel Allende, and Joshua Redman.
Burstein pulls back the curtain to reveal the sources of these
artists' inspiration and the processes that bring their work into
being. These artists may not change lead into gold, Burstein
writes, but they lift materials from their familiar contexts,
combining, reshaping, transforming them into works of art that
change the way we see the world. "Spark" is an invaluable resource
for the aspiring writer and artist, but the need for creativity
extends well beyond the world of paintbrushes and typewriters.
Creativity is integral to business, parenting, education, science,
and, perhaps most poignantly, our personal relationships. Rarely do
books on creativity illuminate and inspire; this marvelous volume
will help you find a spark of your own.
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The Real Thing (Paperback)
Kurt Andersen; Introduction by Kurt Andersen
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R424
R350
Discovery Miles 3 500
Save R74 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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You may already know that Belgium is the most boring country on
planet Earth, but do you know why? Or what makes the Mark 44, Model
O Lazy Dog Missile Cluster, the sexiest piece of military hardware
on wheels? Or how LSD edged out all contenders as the Platonic
Ideal of illicit drugs?
From cities to sitcoms, from scotch to soda, from English monarchs
to French movies, "The Real Thing" is a compendium of the
quintessential, providing definitive answers to some of the most
compelling questions of our time: What confection out-cholesterols
the competition? Why is The Country Club "the" country club? Which
Charlie Chan proved the least scrutable?
Author Kurt Andersen's pithy pronouncements sparkle with wit,
sophistication, and a healthy dose of skeptical good humor as he
strips world culture of accumulated hype and accepted wisdom,
laying bare the sine qua nons and the ne plus ultras in a sassy
series of satirical essays that give credit where credit is due
while simultaneously foreclosing on the bogus, the ersatz, the
would-be, and the has-been. "The Real Thing" is the real thing.
These days, that's really something.
We are living in what one author describes as ""highly promotional
times."" Governments and corporations, nonprofits and special
interest groups, all have spin doctors trying to turn the news to
their advantage. This increasingly incestuous connection between
the practitioners of public relations and journalism has resulted
in a troubling shift in power. ""Public Relations and the Press""
examines how this shift came to be and explores the questions it
raises about the role of media in a democratic society and the
future of journalism. A democracy works when individuals have
access to reliable information upon which to base decisions -
information that in our day comes from the mass media. But what if
journalists do not have the wherewithal to question their sources
and evaluate the information they provide? This, Karla K. Gower
explains, is precisely what happens when economic and competitive
pressures shift power from the journalist to the source - and the
source, not the journalist, controls the flow of information to the
public. Gowers describes a situation in which people, ""informed""
by practitioners of public relations, do not have sufficient
information to make valid decisions. At stake is the core
credibility of the press itself, and therefore the essential claim
of journalism to a privileged role in a democratic social order.
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Heyday (MP3 format, CD)
Kurt Andersen; Read by Charles Leggett
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R1,061
R780
Discovery Miles 7 800
Save R281 (26%)
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Out of stock
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