This delightful, colorful volume traces the hugely popular singer's life and career, analyzing the Buffett phenomenon from the early days to the present. Illustrations throughout.

As many visitors to Ocracoke will attest, the island's vibrant dialect is one of its most distinctive cultural features. In Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks, Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes present a fascinating account of the Ocracoke brogue. They trace its development, identify the elements of pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax that make it unique, and even provide a glossary and quiz to enhance the reader's knowledge of 'Ocracokisms.' In the process, they offer an intriguing look at the role language plays in a culture's efforts to define and maintain itself. But Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks is more than a linguistic study. Based on extensive interviews with more than seventy Ocracoke residents of all ages and illustrated with captivating photographs by Ann Ehringhaus and Herman Lankford, the book offers valuable insight on what makes Ocracoke special. In short, by tracing the history of island speech, the authors succeed in opening a window on the history of the islanders themselves.

This volume deals primarily with absentology, an ontological and social-scientific epistemological mode, dedicated to the analysis of absence. The book is drawn by manifestations of absence wherever they may be encountered. It deals with three terms, ‘the shadow economy’, ‘corruption’ and ‘pollution’, while constructing a non-realist ontology predicated upon the emptiness of all predicates, as expounded by certain strands of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. According to the absentological viewpoint, there is nothing outside, beyond, below or above relations. Relations exist on their own, enchained within an immense, infinite regress, opening and closing upon one another. Absentology is, by consequence of its nonattachment to phenomena, a form of social inquiry fundamentally alien to each and every social form, and it abandons any illusions about the possibility of an escape from the realm of relationality. This book will appeal to students and academics interested in ontological philosophy.

I have to do the one thing I don’t want to…go back to my hometown for my high school reunion. Jaylen, my childhood best friend and the girl who broke my heart, will be there. There’s no avoiding it. It’s supposed to be a quick in and out visit, but Jaylen invites me to a Halloween party. I know I should say no, but curiosity gets the best of me and the next thing I know I’m searching for a costume. How much could one night actually change?

As the hurricane approaches, take refuge, settle down to a few drinks of rum & rain, and soon you'll be raucously entertained with these 16 stories of madness and mayhem of life afloat and ashore in t