A respectful, affectionate literary profile of novelist and poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994). Awarding-winning writer Joan Jobe Smith -- a Pushcart Honoree -- shares up-close, personal recollections of her mentor and friend, Charles Bukowski. Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis also includes remembrances and comments from the women in Bukowski's life -- including Frances Dean Smith (francEyE), Ann Menebroker, Linda King, and Pamela Miller Wood (aka Cupcakes). "Joan Jobe Smith's book is a joy! A terrific, sweet, loving book--the interviews, everyone's reminiscences, the poems & Fred Voss's, the First Bukowski Festival--a moving, endearing Love Song, the kind of thing that happens at funerals when people stand and spontaneously tell stories filled with their love & memories. A book full of heart, Joan's own love for Bukowski's girlfriends, her own large spirit makes her the perfect hostess for this festival & whenever she speaks of herself it's with self-effacing & humorous humility. Her sweetness & goodness permeates the whole book. I'm moved on every page." STEVE KOWIT, author of The First Noble Truth(University of Tampa Press, 2007)

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. "It began as a whim"--an impulsive meeting between the iconic Charles Bukowski and his famed muse, Pamela "Cupcakes" Wood--that leads to a two-year relationship Wood chronicles in this memoir. Her story is refreshingly blunt as she details their often ridiculous, yet charming relationship. This is a Bukowski enthusiast's dream--an immersion into his life with the independent and spirited "Scarlet," the woman he wrote about in the book of the same name. She appears as "Tammie" in Bukowski's book Women. What was the powerful chemistry between Bukowski and the woman whose identity intrigued so many? Written with engaging wit, this is an insightful recollection of their life together. We see Buk as a gifted, flawed man, yet we appreciate him for his deeply sensitive and compassionate nature.

"Poetry, short stories, memoirs, book excerpts, and essays about Charles Bukowski as well as portraits of the author from over 75 friends and admirers around the world."--P. [4] of cover.

"When bebop was new," writes Thomas Owens, "many jazz musicians and most of the jazz audience heard it as radical, chaotic, bewildering music." For a nation swinging to the smoothly orchestrated sounds of the big bands, this revolutionary movement of the 1940s must have seemed destined for a short life on the musical fringe. But today, Owens writes, bebop is nothing less than "the lingua franca of jazz, serving as the principal musical language of thousands of jazz musicians." In Bebop, Owens conducts us on an insightful, loving tour through the music, players, and recordings that changed American culture. Combining vivid portraits of bebop's gigantic personalities with deft musical analysis, he ranges from the early classics of modern jazz (starting with the 1943 Onyx Club performances of Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Oscar Pettiford, Don Byas, and George Wallington) through the central role of Charlie Parker, to an instrument-by-instrument look at the key players and their innovations. Illustrating his discussion with numerous musical excerpts, Owens skillfully demonstrates why bebop was so revolutionary, with fascinating glimpses of the tempestuous jazz world: Thelonious Monk, for example, did "everything 'wrong' in the sense of traditional piano technique....Because his right elbow fanned outward away from his body, he often hit the keys at an angle rather than in parallel. Sometimes he hit a single key with more than one finger, and divided single-line melodies between two hands." In addition to his discussions of individual instruments and players, Owens examines ensembles, with their sometimes volatile collaborations: in the Jazz Messengers, Benny Golson told of how his own mellow saxophone playing would get lost under Art Blakey's furious drumming: "He would do one of those famous four-bar drum rolls going into the next chorus, and I would completely disappear. He would holler over at me, 'Get up out of that hole!'" In this marvelous account, Owens comes right to the present day, with accounts of new musicians ranging from the Marsalis brothers to lesser-known masters like pianist Michel Petrucciani. Bebop is a jazz-lover's dream--a serious yet highly personal look at America's most distinctive music.

Tracing the history of the Cleveland Clinic from its start as a small not-for-profit group practice to being the world's second largest private academic medical center, this medical history tells one of the most dramatic stories in modern medicine. Starting on the battlefield hospitals of World War I, this details how the clinic achieved medical firsts, such as the discovery of coronary angiography and the world's first successful larynx transplant, improved hospital safety, and met the challenges of the 21st century to be ranked among the top five hospitals in America. This text not only recounts the history of the clinic but presents a model for other not-for-profit organizations on how to endure and thrive.

Dual Impressions: Poetic Conversations About Art is a discussion between John Brantingham and Jeffrey Graessley about art and life in poetic form. The collection covers themes such as war, poverty, and social justice. Featured artists include: Max Beckman, Arnold Bocklin, Eugène Boudin, Constantine Brancusi, Pieter Bruegel (the Elder), Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Frederick Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Lucas Cranach (the Elder), Edgar Degas, Jan Davidz de Heem, El Greco, Max Ernst, Juan Gris, Paul-Camille Guigou,Edward Hopper, Paul Klee, Gustav Klimt, Pieter Lastman, René Magritte, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Amadeo Modligliani, Claude Monet, Jacob Moore, Pablo Picasso, The Polyphemus Painter, Francesco Primaticcio, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, John Singer Sargent, Sassetta,Georges-Pierre Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, John William Waterhouse, James Whistler, Tung Yuan

A collection of erasure poems based on the writings of a range of noir authors, including James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Walter Mosley, Robert B. Parker, and Cornell Woolrich.