Have you ever wondered where rocking chairs came from, or why cheap plastic chairs are suddenly everywhere? In Now I Sit Me Down, the distinguished architect and writer Witold Rybczynski chronicles the history of the chair from the folding stools of pharaonic Egypt to the ubiquitous stackable monobloc chairs of today. He tells the stories of the inventor of the bentwood chair, Michael Thonet, and of the creators of the first molded-plywood chair, Charles and Ray Eames. He reveals the history of chairs to be a social history--of different ways of sitting, of changing manners and attitudes, and of varying tastes. The history of chairs is the history of who we are. We learn how the ancient Chinese switched from sitting on the floor to sitting in a chair, and how the iconic chair of Middle America--the Barcalounger--traces its roots back to the Bauhaus. Rybczynski weaves a rich tapestry that draws on art and design history, personal experience, and historical accounts. And he pairs these stories with his own delightful hand-drawn illustrations: colonial rockers and English cabrioles, languorous chaise longues, and no-nonsense ergonomic task chairs--they're all here. The famous Danish furniture designer Hans Wegner once remarked, "A chair is only finished when someone sits in it." As Rybczynski tells it, the way we choose to sit and what we choose to sit on speak volumes about our values, our tastes, and the things we hold dear.

George Plimpton needed no encouragement. If there was a sport to play, a party to throw, a celebrity to amaze, a fireworks display to ignite, Plimpton was front and center hurling the pitch, popping the corks, lighting the fuse. And then, of course, writing about it with incomparable zest and style. His books made him a legend. "The Paris Review, the magazine he founded and edited, won him a throne in literary heaven. Somehow, in the midst of his self-generated cyclones, Plimpton managed to toss off dazzling essays, profiles, and "New Yorker "Talk of the Town" pieces. This delightful volume collects the very best of Plimpton's inspired brief "excursions." Whether he was escorting Hunter Thompson to the "Fear and Loathing movie premiere in New York or tracking down the California man who launched himself into the upper atmosphere with nothing but a lawn chair and a bunch of weather balloons, Plimpton had a rare knack for finding stories where no one else thought to look. Who but Plimpton would turn up in Las Vegas, notebook in hand, for the annual porn movie awards gala? Among the many gems collected here are accounts of helping Jackie Kennedy plan an unforgettable children's birthday party, the time he improvised his way through amateur night at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater, and how he managed to get himself kicked out of Exeter just weeks before graduation. The grand master of what he called "participatory journalism," George Plimpton followed his bent and his genius down the most unbelievable rabbit holes-but he always came up smiling. This exemplary, utterly captivating volume is a fitting tribute to one of the great literary lives of our time. "From the Hardcoveredition.

This comprehensive activity book and curriculum guide about the Middle Ages contains comprehension questions and answers, maps and geography activities, coloring pages, lists of additional readings in history and literature, and simple, hands-on activities designed for grades one through four.

Fifteen years ago, the residents of a smallArizonatown just north of the Mexican border began to be affected by the criminal acts of a small band of survivalists, encamped approximately 50 miles south of town. Led by by a former U.S. Army officer, named Tom Roberts, dishonorably discharged, near the end of the Vietnam war, this band of survivalists, silently conducted criminal acts, such as drug running, extortion, and white slavery. For years Roberts kept just ahead of the law in his dealings, until a beautiful district attorney by the name of Jennifer Danials manages to dig up the evidence that would finally put Roberts away. One week later, her dead body was discovered floating in a nearby river. Now, ten years later, the woman''s seventeen- year old daughter, Sheila, leads a very extraordinary life. Raised alone, by her wheelchair-bound older brother, Andrew, since she was just seven, she has excelled from a distraught young girl to a black-belt in the martial arts and an almost genius academically. Sheila Danials, her friends, and family know nothing of Roberts plans as they go about their everyday lives. But every day that brings Tom Roberts closer to his retirement...brings the Danials family closer to a showdown with him.

"Isabella, the wife Sheikh Adan thought was dead, has just walked back into his life on the eve of his wedding to another woman. Now Adan is to be crowned King, Isabella must be his Queen--sharing his desert throne and the royal bed. But gone is the dutiful, pure girl he once knew; in her place is a defiant, sultry woman who makes Adan's blood run hot. A woman who has no memory of being his wife"--Publisher.

No other silent film director has been as extensively studied as D. W. Griffith. However, only a small group of his more than five hundred films has been the subject of a systematic analysis, and the vast majority of his other works still await proper examination. For the first time in film studies, the complete creative output of Griffith - from Professional Jealousy (1907) to The Struggle (1931) - will be explored in this multivolume collection of contributions from an international team of leading scholars in the field. Created as a companion to the ongoing retrospective held by the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, the Griffith Project is an indispensable guide to the work of a crucial figure in the arts of the nineteenth century. This volume covers the year 1913 and includes J. B. Kaufman's notes on the Griffith-supervised Liberty Belles and A Fair Rebel, as well as Griffith's first feature, Judith of Bethulia.