FIVE PLAYS BY ROBERT REICHARDT Included in this collection are five fascinating plays by the avant-garde playwright, Robert Reichardt. Each is unique in its subject matter, and dazzling in originality. A GRADUAL STACCATO OR EMPTINESS concerns the trauma of being a genius -- a child prodigy -- in an ignorant world inhabited by lesser beings. Nobody noticed (or could even imagine) that someone as profoundly gifted as Erick Uselmann might be in trouble -- and it wasn't just about Hiroshima. What do words and literacy mean to mankind? Everything, it turns out -- they make us human. In the comedy, A TOTALLY IMPRACTICAL MAN, a former illiterate (Kurt Mauer) is fought over by two attractive women -- who definitely aren't what they seem. They both promise him a mysterious "Universal Alphabet Machine" which will revolutionize the entire world by eliminating illiteracy, and poverty. All he has to do is follow one of them. RICHARD PLANTAGENT (TWICE), or the Peasant's Revolt of 1381, is a play based on the turbulent life of King Richard II. The drama combines what we know of the historical man with someone made more accessible through the imagination. Can an ugly, middle-aged man and a young beautiful girl co-exist on a remote island the size of a boxing ring? This is the premise of LOVE ON A GRIEF ISLAND, as Sam and Claudia struggle to survive after a plane crash in the South Pacific. In the short work, THE FABRIC OF SOCIETY, Gaston Laclede, a monarchist father, and Luc, his radical son, are forced to make a hard decision in Paris during the French Revolution.

Examines in depth the long-standing influence of Latin music on jazz. Details the early influence of Latin styles on the birth of the musical form, and the continuing cross- pollination of Brazilian, Cuban, Argentinean, and Mexican music with American jazz. Profiles such key Latin jazz musicians as Tito Puente, Astrid Gilberto, Chick Corea and others, as well as Anglo and Black musicians who were deeply influenced by Latin music, such as Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A confident and mesmerizing fiction debut, from the winner of the Plimpton Prize Set in the South, at the crossroads of a world that is both secular and devoutly Christian, April Ayers Lawson's stories evoke the inner lives of young women and men navigating sexual, emotional, and spiritual awakenings. In "The Negative Effects of Homeschooling," Conner, sixteen, accompanies his grieving mother to the funeral of her best friend, Charlene, a woman who was once a man. In "The Way You Must Play Always," Gretchen, who looks young even for thirteen, heads into her weekly piano lesson in nervous anticipation of her next illicit meeting with her teacher's brother, Wesley. Thin and sickly, wasting from a brain tumor, Wesley spends his days watching pornography and smoking pot, and yet Gretchen can only interpret his advances as the first budding of love. And in the title story, Jake grapples with the growing chasm between him and his wife, Sheila, who was still a virgin when they wed. At a cocktail party thrown by a wealthy donor to his hospital, he ponders the intertwining imperatives of marriage--sex and love, violation and trust, spirituality and desire--even as he finds himself succumbing to the temptations of his host. Self-assured and sensual, Virgin and Other Stories is the first work of a young writer of unusual mastery.

The prize-winning, New York Times bestselling short story collection from the internationally bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo 'The best book you'll read this year' New York Times 'Dazzlingly surreal stories about a failing America' Sunday Times WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx(TM) in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.

German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was arguably the most influential figure of the European postwar avant-garde and unquestionably the most elusive and enigmatic musical thinker of a generation that includes Pierre Boulez, John Cage, and Luciano Berio. His radically new electronic and instrumental music converted Igor Stravinsky to serialism in the 1950s and has continued to inspire young composers for more than fifty years. Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1950–2007 draws on more than fifty years of Maconie’s close study of Stockhausen and functions as a catalogue raisonee of Stockhausen’s complete output. With plentiful citations from the history of radio, film, and sound recording, as well as from contemporary science and technology, the book is laid out in chronological order and contains ample commentary on the composer’s sources of inspiration. Each composition is also fully documented within the text, giving full information of each work’s publisher, catalog number, instrumentation, duration, and authorized compact disc. The updated edition extends the range of the volume’s contents to include the twenty-five works Stockhausen composed between 2004 and his death in 2007. Stockhausen’s status in the history of music in the late twentieth century can now be appreciated with unprecedented clarity. All listeners will benefit from this work, and American music lovers in particular will find it an invaluable guide to the ongoing debate and rivalry over the sources of abstract expressionism and the avant-garde.

This is the story of a sailing odyssey, but also of an inward journey into deep truths about who we are and how we belong in the universal scheme. A meditation on sailing and life, it is a hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking book for landlubbers, sailors, philosophers and naturalists alike. Mostly sailing alone, Peter Reason invites us to share in the minute-by-minute challenges of seamanship and navigation, on his journey in his yacht Coral from Plymouth across the Celtic Sea and back again. Exploring far more than the seaways, the author successfully manages to tell the story of a journey with another dimension - that of investigating and reflecting on our human place in the ecology of the planet. Above all, this book shows us that Nature is not just a place to visit, but our home.