Author: Sheldon Stern File Type: pdf The Cuban missile crisis was the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War and the most perilous moment in American history. In this dramatic narrative written especially for students and general readers, Sheldon M. Stern, longtime historian at the John F. Kennedy Library, enables the reader to follow the often harrowing twists and turns of the crisis. Based on the authors authoritative transcriptions of the secretly recorded ExComm meetings, the book conveys the emotional ambiance of the meetings by capturing striking moments of tension and anger as well as occasional humorous intervals. Unlike todays readers, the participants did not have the luxury of knowing how this potentially catastrophic showdown would turn out, and their uncertainty often gives their discussions the nerve-racking quality of a fictional thriller. As President Kennedy told his advisers, What we are doing is throwing down a card on the table in a game which we dont know the ending of. Stern documents that JFK and his administration bore a substantial share of the responsibility for the crisis. Covert operations in Cuba, including efforts to kill Fidel Castro, had convinced Nikita Khrushchev that only the deployment of nuclear weapons could protect Cuba from imminent attack. However, President Kennedy, a seasoned Cold Warrior in public, was deeply suspicious of military solutions to political problems and appalled by the prospect of nuclear war. He consistently steered policy makers away from an apocalyptic nuclear conflict, measuring each move and countermove with an eye to averting what he called, with stark eloquence, the final failure. **

Author: Neil Postman File Type: pdf What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? In the season of Trump and Hillary, Neils Postmans essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever. Originally published in 1985, Neil Postmans groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic mediafrom the Internet to cell phones to DVDsit has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining controlof our media, so that they can serve our highest goals. Way back in 1985 - the year Stern conquered the New York airwaves and a brash young Trump was best known for breaking apart the upstartUSFL football league - one prophet predicted todays political crisis. That prophets name was Neil Postman, a New York University professor and media critic. His landmark book Amusing Ourselves to Deathpredicted that schlock entertainment values would eventually strangle American democracy like a cluster of poison ivy...Its unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman. -CNN **

Author: Arika Okrent File Type: epub Here is the captivating story of humankinds enduring quest to build a better languageand overcome the curse of Babel. Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one mans attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity. And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, Loglan (not to be confused with Lojban), and the nearly nine hundred other invented languages that represent the hard work, high hopes, and full-blown delusions of so many misguided souls over the centuries. With intelligence and humor, Arika Okrent has written a truly original and enlightening book for all word freaks, grammar geeks, and plain old language lovers.**From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Efforts to make language simpler, clearer, less divisive and more truthful have backfired spectacularly, to judge by this delightful tour of linguistic hubris. Linguist Okrent explores some of the themes and shortcomings of 900 years worth of artificial languages. She surveys philosophical languages that order all knowledge into self-evident systems that turn out to be bizarrely idiosyncratic symbol languages of supposedly crystalline pictographs that are actually bafflingly opaque basic languages that throw out all the fancy words and complicated idioms rigorously logical languages so rule-bound that its impossible to utter a correct sentence international languages, like Esperanto, that unite different cultures into a single idealistic counterculture and whimsical constructed languages that assert the unique culture and worldview of women, Klingons or chipmunks. Okrent gamely translates to and from these languages, with unspeakably hilarious results, and riffs on the colorful eccentricities of their megalomaniacal creators. Fortunately, her own prose is a model of clarity and grace through it, she conveys fascinating insights into why natural language, with its corruptions, ambiguities and arbitrary conventions, trips so fluently off our tongues. (May 19) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. ReviewHats off to Okrent, who expertly exposes the history, culture, and preoccupations of this insular tribe who live among us. She rescues language inventors, or conlangers, from the oddball binutopianists all, theyre the first biotechnologists, trying to leapfrog evolution and improve human life. Theyll thank her but everyone else will, too, for finally making sense of the conlangers discontents. Michael Erard, author of Um Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean A lively, informative, insightful examination of artificial languageswho invents them, why, and why most of them fail. I loved this book.Will Shortz, Crossword Editor, New York Times Linguist Okrent explores some of the themes and shortcomings of 900 years worth of artificial languages. Okrent gamely translates these languages with unspeakably hilarious results, and riffs on the colorful eccentricities of their megalomaniacal creators. Fortunately, her own prose is a model of clarity and grace through it, she conveys fascinating insights into why natural language, with its corruptions, ambiguities and arbitrary conventions, trips so fluently off our tongues. Publishers Weekly, starred review Arika Okrent is a linguist whose fascination with the faded plastic flowers in the lush orchid garden of languages is recounted to delightful, often comic effect in In the Land of Invented Languages....Okrents style is eminently suited to her approach, which is at once serious and playful, exemplified by her marvelous, snappy opening sentence Klingon speakers ... inhabit the lowest possible rung on the geek ladder. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The author...examines a variety of would-be languages and related philosophical tenets (there are no pure ideas, all signs depend on conventions) in ...

Author: Hermann Hesse File Type: epub In the spring of 1922, several months after completing Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse wrote a fairy tale that was also a love story, inspired by the woman who was to become his second wife. That story, Pictors Metamorphoses, is the centerpiece of this anthology of Hesses luminous short fiction. Based on The Arabian Nights and the work of the Brothers Grimm, the nineteen stories collected here represent a half century of Hesses short writings. They display the full range of Hesses lifetime fascination with fantasy--as dream, fairy tale, satire, or allegory.