Author: Carlo Vercellone File Type: pdf

Author: Jacques Ellul File Type: epub Originally broadcast on CBC Radios Ideas as a series of interviews, Elluls first-person approach here makes his ideas accessible to readers looking for new ways of understanding our society. Perspectives on Our Age also gives unique new insight into Elluls life, his work, and the origins and development of his beliefs and theories.

Author: Antonia Fraser File Type: epub 400 years ago this November the most ambitious and extraordinary plot ever conceived in this country came close to success the attempt by Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators to destroy in a single, annihilating blast the entire British ruling class and royal family. This book draws on the expertise of different writers to bring to life the immense implications of the Plot and the strange way they have echoed down to us over four centuries in what remains the quintessential English festival. Pauline Croft writes about the amazing plot itself and the anxious, unstable world of Jacobean Britain, Antonia Fraser imagines a world in which the plot had succeeded, Justin Champion dramatizes the national emergency that followed the plots discovery and its savage anti-Catholicism, David Cressy traces how Bonfire Night has been celebrated since its inception as a holiday, Mike Jay focuses on the most famous and enduring rituals held each year at Lewes and Brenda Buchanan offers a wonderful history of fireworks in Britain.

Author: Haven Kimmel File Type: epub After twenty years of burrowing into the corner of the family couch, eating junk food, and reading science fiction, Indiana mother Delonda Jarvis did something that shocked her family she went to college. Or, as her younger daughter, Haven Kimmel, writes, she stood up, brushed away the pork rind crumbs, and escaped by the skin of her teeth. Despite having no money, no car, and a resentful husband, Delonda managed to obtain a masters degree in English. The former teenage bride also dropped one hundred pounds, learned how to drive, and became a breadwinner. But as she reclaimed herself, her marriage disintegrated.**Amazon.com ReviewHaven Kimmels memoir She Got Up Off the Couch might have been called The Further Adventures of Zippy, since it picks up where her bestselling A Girl Named Zippy left off, and is reeled out in much the same vein. The person who got up off the couch is Zippys mother, Delonda, who for years sat on the titular sofa, ate, read, and watched TV until she weighed 268 pounds and life was nearly unbearable. You would never know the bad parts from Haven Kimmel, who always concentrates on the bright side, even though she lived in a house without heat, food, indoor plumbing, a dependable water supply or even a modicum of cleanliness. Kimmel loves her parents inordinately, even at their most unlovable. Delonda takes a College Entrance exam, passes it and enrolls at Ball State, where she completes a degree in two years, goes on for a Masters and gets a job as a high school teacher. That sounds fairly straightforward but it wasnt easy. Bob Jarvis, Delondas husband and Zippys father, gave her no help at all in fact, he ridiculed her and ignored her progress. Eventually, he found someone else while Delonda was busy reclaiming her life. We could read this as a tale of the times, where a woman takes charge of herself, loses 120 pounds and, against all odds, gains an education and a livelihood. It is all of that, and more. Life in Mooreland, Indiana, in the 1970s is not very exciting, but Zippy finds wonder everywhere and often laughed until she tipped right over. There is an unquenchable spirit in the girl, and then in the woman, that keeps popping up despite a very sketchy upbringing. The neighbors fed and bathed her, she wore the same pair of pants to school every day for an entire school year--without benefit of laundry. Her brother and sister lit out at the first chance they had--though Melinda ends up only a few blocks away and becomes another safe port for Zippy. She is a victim of benign neglect, not malice or meanness. Her tales of church camp, days with her friends, driving with her Dad, going to a play with her Mother, her love for her niece and nephew and her discovery that her Dad is having an affair are all told in typical Zippy-style they are humorous, poignant, exuberant, and often breathless. Stay tuned this book ends when Zippy is only thirteen. Hopefully theres more to come. --Valerie RyanFrom Publishers Weekly This sequel to A Girl Named Zippy charts the continuing escapades of adolescent Zippy in tiny Mooreland, Ind., putting special emphasis on the liberation, via a college education, of her mother, Delonda Jarvis. With stories ranging from Zippys run-in with a territorial cow on a friends farm to A Short List of Records My Father Threatened to Break Over My Head If I Played Them One More Time, Kimmels Twainish tone deepens into a more modern type of despair as the problems of her parents marriage become pronounced. By learning to drive, getting a bachelors degree and becoming a teacher to support her family, Delonda expands her potential, mirroring the growing possibilities for women in the post-60s era. Meanwhile, Zippys father begrudges Delonda these few freedoms, while still failing to provide adequately for his family and flirting with adultery. Kimmel has a distinct voice and introduces quirky characters, but even better, she goes beyond memoir to explore the anxiety inherent in the shifting of traditional family and gender roles common to her generation. She draws readers in with her easygoing manner and ability to entertain, but surprises with a bittersweet paean to childhood naivete and an arresting account of a familys disintegration. (Jan.) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.