An extended reflection on the pleasures and wisdom of golf, "Golf Beats Us All" will satisfy the philosopher lurking in every avid golfer and make the golfer smarter and wiser about himself and his game. Author Joe Amato has long been fascinated by the myriad of pleasures offered by golf. And like any player, he remains intrigued by the fact that golfers find such pleasure in a game that causes so much pain, wastes so much time, and whose outcome is of utter insignificance. He offers an intelligent and searching conversation that invites readers to think about their relation to a game that makes them angels and fools.

This brand new book takes a positive and dynamic approach to surviving whatever life throws at you, exploring the range of skills, attitudes and abilities you need to survive and thrive in difficult times, both personally and professionally. While some people are more naturally resilient than others, the book asserts that resilience is a quality that can be learnt and developed, whatever your stage in life or personal situation. Based on extensive new research, and backed-up with real-life case studies and examples of people who display resilient behaviour (including those who have turned adversity into advantage), the book shows how you too can bounce back from bad times, learning how to take back control, know when to press ahead or cut your losses, and see opportunity where others see threat. The book concludes with a 10-point plan to help you pull all the strands together, building resilience, a skill for life. Key contents include: Understanding yourself and your personal 'Resilience Quotient' Making judgements and taking decisions Assessing risk and solving problems Managing stress Being true to yourself.

In this lively social history, Amato, author of "Dust," tells the large-scale and small-scale stories of what was man's first mode of travel--walking.

Joseph A. Amato proposes a bold and innovative approach to writing local history in this imaginative, wide-ranging, and deeply engaging exploration of the meaning of place and home. Arguing that people of every place and time deserve a history, Amato draws on his background as a European cultural historian and a prolific writer of local history to explore such topics as the history of cleanliness, sound, anger, madness, the clandestine, and the environment in southwestern Minnesota. While dedicated to the unique experiences of a place, his lively work demonstrates that contemporary local history provides a vital link for understanding the relation between immediate experience and the metamorphosis of the world at large. In an era of encompassing forces and global sensibilities, Rethinking Home advocates the power of local history to revivify the individual, the concrete, and the particular. This singular book offers fresh perspectives, themes, and approaches for energizing local history at a time when the very notion of place is in jeopardy. Amato explains how local historians shape their work around objects we can touch and institutions we have directly experienced. For them, theory always gives way to facts. His vivid portraits of individual people, places, situations, and cases (which include murders, crop scams, and taking custody of the law) are joined to local illustrations of the use of environmental and ecological history. This book also puts local history in the service of contemporary history with the examination of recent demographic, social, and cultural transformations. Critical concluding chapters on politics and literature--especially Sinclair Lewis's Main Street and Longfellow's Hiawatha--show how metaphor and myth invent, distort, and hold captive local towns, peoples, and places.

A history of dust, discussing dust's role as a condition of life and as a measure of the small until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Goodnight Children Everywhere "Richard Nelson’s new play announces itself almost as if it were Chekhovian . . . the play, like all plays of discovery and purgation, has a translucency and a density that nag, hurt and heal."—London Sunday Times New England "Smart, sharp, acridly funny . . . in the sweetest of all ironies, it’s an American writer at the peak of his form who has given London’s RSC the major new play that has eluded them all year."—Variety Some Americans Abroad "A sequel to The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain’s caustic view of pretentious Americans abroad: both works indict the well-educated American middle-class for its supine and superficial relationship to Old World culture."—New York Times Two Shakespearean Actors "Nelson’s provocative account of the deadly rivalry between two great 18th-century actors."—Variety Franny’s Way "Boundaries warp and melt in the dense urban heat that pervades Franny’s Way, Richard Nelson’s sensitively drawn portrait of love in the age of J.D. Salinger."—New York Times A prolific and varied writer, Richard Nelson is also the author of a screenplay, a television play, the books for musicals and plays for young audiences, as well as a string of radio plays and powerful adaptations from the classic European repertory of Beaumarchais, Brecht, Chekhov, Goldoni, Molière and Strindberg, all of which have influenced the development of his own craft. Among his many awards include the London Time Out Award, two OBIEs, two Giles Cooper awards and numerous grants and fellowships. He is an honorary associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company.