The Billygoats, champions of the National Conference of the NFL, are flying to New Orleans for the Super Bowl when their plane is hijacked by a familiar giant with a machine gun, a drug habit and a pair of sure hands... Alphabet Jackson is the Billygoats' balding offensive center, and he tells the suspenseful, violent and funny story, which really began on the first day of training camp. For Alphabet, the ride to the Super Bowl is a long-held secret dream that threatens to end in a nightmare of flame, twisted metal and death. With Alphabet, a ten-year veteran coming off a knee operation, you venture into the inner world of pro football with as colorful a cast of characters as you've ever encountered. Alphabet knows his teammates well - the studs, bruisers, boozers and pill poppers. He knows the agonies of the grass drills, the brutal combat in the pit, the savage joy of the game. And he knows the wild hilarity, the "football Annies," the "management moguls," the frantic fans off the field. But it's not until the plane is hijacked that Alphabet understands some of the things that have been going on all season: the suspicious shift in point spreads, the crazy incidents stirring up racial tensions, the kook telephone calls to wives. It all comes together on the way to the Super Bowl - in a novel that will hold the championship in its field for years to come.

The first comprehensive intellectual history of alphabet studies. Inventing the Alphabet provides the first account of two-and-a-half millennia of scholarship on the alphabet. Drawing on decades of research, Johanna Drucker dives into sometimes obscure and esoteric references, dispelling myths and identifying a pantheon of little-known scholars who contributed to our modern understandings of the alphabet, one of the most important inventions in human history. Beginning with Biblical tales and accounts from antiquity, Drucker traces the transmission of ancient Greek thinking about the alphabet’s origin and debates about how Moses learned to read. The book moves through the centuries, finishing with contemporary concepts of the letters in alpha-numeric code used for global communication systems. Along the way, we learn about magical and angelic alphabets, antique inscriptions on coins and artifacts, and the comparative tables of scripts that continue through the development of modern fields of archaeology and paleography. This is the first book to chronicle the story of the intellectual history through which the alphabet has been “invented” as an object of scholarship.

An extraordinary debut novel that challenges the definition of family and explores the intricate ties that bind us together Ida grew up with Jackson and James—where there was “I” there was a “J.” She can’t recall a time when she didn’t have them around, whether in their early days camping out in the boys’ room decorated with circus scenes or later drinking on rooftops as teenagers. While the world outside saw them as neighbors and friends, to each other the three formed a family unit—two brothers and a sister—not drawn from blood, but drawn from a deep need to fill a void in their single parent households. Theirs was a relationship of communication without speaking, of understanding without judgment, of intimacy without rules and limits. But as the three of them mature and emotions become more complex, Ida and Jackson find themselves more than just siblings. When Jackson’s somnambulism produces violent outbursts and James is hospitalized, Ida is paralyzed by the events that threaten to shatter her family and put it beyond her reach. Kathleen Alcott’s striking debut, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets, is an emotional, deeply layered love story that explores the dynamics of family when it defies bloodlines and societal conventions.

From the time that pages of The Saint John's Bible began touring in major exhibitions nearly a decade ago, people have been moved, captivated, and inspired by this stunning work of modern sacred art. But they often have questions about the illuminations that are scattered throughout the Bible, especially as they first become familiar with it. Why was a certain Scripture passage chosen for illumination rather than another? What materials and source imagery are behind the illuminations? The Art of The Saint John's Bible provides answers to these important questions and many others. Initially published in a series of three volumes, each book has now been revised by the author and included together in this helpful single volume. SinceThe Saint John's Bible is now complete, Susan Sink makes connections between recurring images and motifs throughout the work and reflects on the images with a view to the whole. Her book promises to intensify and expand the experience of all who come in contact with The Saint John's Bible.