Author: Karl Ove Knausgaard File Type: epub *The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaards masterful and intensely-personal series about the four seasons, illustrated with paintings by the great German artist Anselm Kiefer* 2 June--It is completely dark out now. It is twenty-three minutes to midnight and you have already slept for four hours. What you will dream of tonight, no one will ever know. Even if you were to remember it when you wake up, you wouldnt have a language in which to communicate it to us, nor do I think that you quite understand what dreams are, I think that is still undefined for you, that your thoughts havent grasped it yet, and that it therefore lies within that strange zone where it neither exists nor doesnt exist. The conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and original literary projects in recent years, Summer once again intersperses short vividly descriptive essays with emotionally-raw diary entries addressed directly to Knausgaards newborn daughter. Writing more expansively and, if it is possible, even more intimately and unguardedly than in the previous three volumes, he mines with new depth his difficult memories of his childhood and fraught relationship with his own father. Documenting his familys life in rural Sweden and reflecting on a characteristically eclectic array of subjects--mosquitoes, barbeques, cynicism, and skin, to name just a few--he braids the various threads of the previous volumes into a moving conclusion. At his most voluminous since My Struggle, his epic sensational series, Knausgaard writes for his daughter, striving to make ready and give meaning to a world at once indifferent and achingly beautiful. In his hands, the overwhelming joys and insoluble pains of family and parenthood come alive with uncommon feeling. **Review He brings it all alive in his prose, makes it shimmer. Whether intellectually parsing for meaning or playing this existential video game of political turmoil, horror, and heartache, his writing flows easily from quiet, thoughtful engagement to ecstatic communion with the world He may be done with this quartet, the My Struggle series, and autofiction altogether, but I still want more of it. That kind of passionate literary intimacy is rare. And wanting more and even more isnt that just like being in love? *Los Angeles Review of Books* Knausgaard closes his quartet of autobiographical meditations on the seasons in an appropriately verdant and optimistic fashion. . . While interrogating the nature of storytelling, hes priming readers for a powerful, straightforward yarn. Breezy reading thats also a commentary on breezy reading. Some trick. - **Kirkus, starred review **Engrossing Knausgaards prose evokes universal themes from intimate specifics. Publishers Weekly, starred review About the Author Karl Ove Knausgaard (Author) Karl Ove Knausgaards first novel, Out of the World, was the first ever debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics Prize and his second, A Time for Everything, was widely acclaimed. A Death in the Family, the first of the My Struggle cycle of novels, was awarded the prestigious Brage Prize. The My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece all over the world.Anselm Kiefer (Illustrator) Anselm Kiefers body of work comprises paintings, sculptures, installations, artist books, and works on paper such as watercolours, woodcuts, collages, and photographs. Fusing art and literature, Kiefer engages taboo and controversial issues from recent history as well as the ancient myth of life, death, and the cosmos. He brings to light the importance of the sacred and spiritual, myth and memory.

Author: Bruce J. Dickson File Type: pdf In Wealth into Power, Bruce Dickson challenges the notion that economic development is leading to political change in China, or that Chinas private entrepreneurs are helping to promote democratization. Instead, they have become partners with the ruling Chinese Communist Party to promote economic growth while maintaining the political status quo. Dicksons research illuminates the Communist Partys strategy for incorporating Chinas capitalists into the political system and how the shared interests, personal ties, and common views of the party and the private sector are creating a form of crony communism. Rather than being potential agents of change, Chinas entrepreneurs may prove to be a key source of support for the partys agenda. Based on years of research and original survey data, this book will be of interest to all those interested in Chinas political future and in the relationship between economic wealth and political power.ReviewWealth into Power is a masterful exploration of the convergence of economic and political power in China. Carefully, lucidly, and convincingly, Bruce Dickson demonstrates that economic development in China has generated crony communism rather than demands for democracy though the cozy relationships between private entrepreneurs and party leaders come at huge costs in terms of corruption and inequality. This book should be widely read by anyone trying to understand contemporary China. -Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Boston University, and author of China Since TiananmenIn Wealth into Power, Bruce Dickson describes with remarkable clarity why it is that the economic advances in China will not lead to democratization. He lays out in detail how the Chinese Communist Party has co-opted the countrys entrepreneurs and has turned them into a force for preservation of the existing political order rather than as agents of political change. Dicksons cogent book effectively rebuts the common assumption that China, with advancing wealth, will inevitably develop an independent civil society. -James Mann, author of The China Fantasy and author-in-residence, Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International StudiesWealth into Power provides a penetrating analysis of the complex relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and Chinas thriving private sector. In this ground-breaking study of the political orientations, social backgrounds, and survival strategies of Chinese private entrepreneurs, Bruce Dickson shows that Chinas new capitalists, far from becoming a driving force for democratic change, have become part of the authoritarian order. By challenging the conventional wisdom about the relationship between economic development and democratization, Dickson presents a sobering political reality that has often been missed in the current discourse on Chinas future. -Minxin Pei, senior associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of Chinas Trapped TransitionBruce Dicksons superb new study is mandatory reading for all serious analysts of Chinas socio-economic and political future. The studys data are unique, the narrative is nuanced, the analysis is sophisticated, and the findings are sobering. Dickson has put his finger on a key actor in China political future, and finds evidence that the emerging business class is being effectively co-opted by the [Communist] party-state, rather than being proto-democratic agents of political change. A major contribution to our understanding of Chinas political landscape. -David Shambaugh, Professor of Political Science and International Affiars, George Washington University & The Brookings InstitutionBased on original diachronic survey data and years of studying Leninst-style one-party systems, Wealth into Power expertly demonstrates that Chinas capitalists represent the source of communist resilience rather than a force for political change. Once again, Bruce Dicksons scholarship is a model of clarity, analytic fluency, and empirically-grounded conclusions. Anyone interested in the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and capitalists should read this book. -Kellee S. Tsai, Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, and author of Capitalism without Democracy The Private Sector in Contemporary ChinaThe rapidly changing Chinese political economy places high demands on us to update our understanding of the business-government relationship and its implications for regime change. Wealth into Power is the rare empirical study that meets these demands. In it, Bruce Dickson meticulously follows up, with new surveys of private entrepreneurs and local officials, on conclusions from the 1990s. The new research confirms and strengthens previous arguments over the past decade, Dickson demonstrates, the communist party has fairly successfully consolidated crony communism in its strategic alliance with the countrys most vital economic group-red capitalists, whose interests and values are not proto-democratic. Wealth into Power provides strong empirical support for the provocative view of an adaptive and resilient communist party. -Melanie Manion, Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-MadisonWealth into Power is a particularly rare kind of scholarship. In 2003, Dickson published Red Capitalists in China, based on a 1999 sample survey, interviews, and documentary research. Remarkably, the book reviewed here resampled the same areas in China and used basically the same questionnaire in 2004 as in 1999. This second set of results obviously allows for temporal comparisons, as well as the opportunity for further interviews and documentary research. Perspectives on Politics, David Bachman, University of Washington[An] excellent study of the relationship between Chinas new group of entrepreneurs and the party-state system. Pacific Affairs, Tony Saich, Harvard University Book DescriptionBruce Dickson challenges the notion that economic development is leading to political change in China. Instead, he argues, Chinas entrepreneurs have become partners with the ruling Chinese Communist Party to promote economic growth while maintaining the political status quo, in effect creating a form of crony communism.

Author: Brian Bond File Type: pdf Britains outstanding military achievement in the First World War has been eclipsed by literary myths. Why has the Armys role on the Western Front been so seriously misrepresented? This book shows how myths have become deeply rooted, particularly in the inter-war period, in the 1960s, and in the 1990s. The outstanding anti-war influences have been war poets, subalterns trench memoirs, the book and film of All Quiet on the Western Front, and the play Journeys End. For a new generation in the 1960s the play and film of Oh What a Lovely War had a dramatic effect, while more recently Blackadder has been dominant. Until more recently, historians had either reinforced the myths, or had failed to counter them. This book follows the intense controversy from 1918 to the present, and concludes that historians are at last permitting the First World War to be placed in proper perspective.

Author: Ann Cline File Type: pdf