An ER doctor examines the beautiful tension between life and death through heartfelt stories of loss, love, and hope.

I Got Mine: Confessions of a Midlist Writer is the memoir of Nichols' extraordinary life, as seen through the lens of his writing. Everything that went into making him a writer and eventually found an outlet in his work--his education, family, wives, children, friends, enemies, politics, and place--is told from the point of view of his daily practice of writing. Beginning with his first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, published in 1965 when he was just twenty-four, Nichols shares his highs and lows: his ambivalent relationship with money; his growing disenchantment with the hypocrisy of capitalism; and his love-hate relationship with Hollywood--including the years-long struggle of working with director Robert Redford on the film version of The Milagro Beanfield War, which was filmed around Truchas and featured many of Nichols' northern New Mexico neighbors. Throughout I Got Mine Nichols spins a shining thread connecting his lifelong engagement with progressive political causes, his passionate interest in and identification with ordinary people, and his deep connection to the land.

An illustrated celebration of the Victorian art of pressed flowers includes information on creating a pressed garden, what to grow, how to use gardening space, the best time for the harvesting of different types of flowers, and more. 25,000 first printing.

This study argues that twentieth-century American women writers' textual representations of female beauty generally recognize a link between beauty standards and aesthetic ideology, exploring female beauty as a symptom of prevailing ideas about art and esthetics. Female beauty, in their texts, is not merely an issue of whether a female character is pretty or not; it is an expression of the controlling discourses negotiated by character, text, and author. In this study, therefore, the women writers' texts are read after interchapters outlining their key cultural and literary contexts. Revising Paul de Man's method of exploring scenes of reading, this study focuses on scenes of beauty in which a character, narrator, or speaker negotiates ideas about beauty. The author pairs Euro-American and African American women writers across the century in three generations: H.D. and Zora Neale Hurston; Gwendolyn Brooks and Sylvia Plath; and Toni Morrison and Louis Gluck. As such, this study offers a landmark black/white dialogue on female beauty in twentieth-century American culture and literature. Scenes of beauty in the texts of these writers suggest multiple feminine aesthetics in twentieth-century American writing, unified in their negotiation of the aesthetic ideologies embodied in female beauty.

"Vicki, you're as beautiful as the spirits of the night. Will you marry me?" Vicki was given this passionate proposal by Claudio Varelli, the second son of a prominent, wealthy Italian family. However, three months later, the day before they are to announce their engagement, Claudio's brother, Maurizio, informs her, "You are going to marry me." Vicki plummets from the peak of happiness to the depths of darkness. In the end, Vicki is persuaded by Maurizio saying, "This is the only way to save both you and the Varelli family," and she begins her married life with him. Maurizio's love engulfs her like a gentle hug, but Vicki's heart is always full of uneasiness. Maurizio! Do you pity me? Do you love me? Or are you just trying to protect your family's reputation? Vicki begins "a journey to find true love" on the set of a lavish household befitting that of a wealthy Italian family....