News is "one of the few things that connects us as a nation" observes the protagonist in the title story of Newsworld, a new collection by Todd James Pierce that explores America's obsession with news and entertainment culture. The characters in "Newsworld" seek to design realistic theme park attractions, such as "OJ's Bronco: The Ride" and "Seige at Waco," that allow park guests to experience the complexities of contemporary news events for themselves. In the story "Columbine: The Musical," high school students stage a musical written as a means of discussing school violence, while their vice principal wrangles a 10 percent discount on a school security system in exchange for corporate sponsorship of the play. In "Wrestling Al Gore," a national wrestling federation uses costumed wrestlers to cast the Gore/Bush election recount into the ring. In an ironic twist, fans become sympathetic to the underdog Gore, champion his cause, and ultimately reflect on the fate of the real politician. In "The Yoshi Compound: A Story of Post-Waco Texas," the followers of the Dalai Yoshi amass weapons and riot gear in hopes of attracting media attention in order to spread their message of love and world peace. The characters in Newsworld, like many Americans, are engulfed in a life-imitating-art phenomenon caused by the hyperreality presented in the media, and they struggle with this overwhelming influence trying to understand whether their own lives fall within or outside its domain.

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture National Book Award Finalist—Fiction In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust. In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence. In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows. Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land. Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself.

Monthly Korea review.

The author embarks on a quest to rediscover the joy of being a Christian. It is perfect for use with the Bible because it has study questions that follow each chapter. It is also a prayer guide for "The Great Ninety Days of Joy after Joy." Daily Texts with Prayers to Gladden the Heart from Ash Wednesday through Pentecost makes this book a perfect devotional guide for Lent and Easter.

DIVLong before the invention of printing, let alone the availability of a daily newspaper, people desired to be informed. In the pre-industrial era news was gathered and shared through conversation and gossip, civic ceremony, celebration, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, edicts, ballads, journals, and the first news-sheets, expanding the news community from local to worldwide. This groundbreaking book tracks the history of news in ten countries over the course of four centuries. It evaluates the unexpected variety of ways in which information was transmitted in the premodern world as well as the impact of expanding news media on contemporary events and the lives of an ever-more-informed public. Andrew Pettegree investigates who controlled the news and who reported it; the use of news as a tool of political protest and religious reform; issues of privacy and titillation; the persistent need for news to be current and journalists trustworthy; and people’s changed sense of themselves as they experienced newly opened windows on the world. By the close of the eighteenth century, Pettegree concludes, transmission of news had become so efficient and widespread that European citizens—now aware of wars, revolutions, crime, disasters, scandals, and other events—were poised to emerge as actors in the great events unfolding around them./div

Have you heard of any bad news lately? Im sure that you have. Did you seek out this bad news; did you go looking for it? Im sure that you didnt. Bad news seems to find its way to us, all day every day. We now live with 24-hour news cycles, and with social media being so popular, these bad news messages just seem to surround us. How can anyone live their life to the fullest with so much disappointment, pain, tragedies and well just bad news - constantly bombarding us? I can answer that. There is hope. I have some good news for you! www.AleyshaProctor.com

Music in the Post-9/11 World addresses the varied and complex roles music has played in the wake of September 11, 2001. Interdisciplinary in approach, international in scope, and critical in orientation, the twelve essays in this groundbreaking volume examine a diverse array of musical responses to the terrorist attacks of that day, and reflect upon the altered social, economic, and political environment of "post-9/11" music production and consumption. Individual essays are devoted to the mass-mediated works of popular musicians such as Bruce Springsteen and Darryl Worley, as well as to lesser-known musical responses by artists in countries including Afghanistan, Egypt, Mexico, Morocco, Peru, and Senegal. Contributors also discuss a range of themes including the role played by Western classical music in rites of mourning and commemoration, "invisible" musical practices such as the creation of television news music, and implicit censorship in the mainstream media. Taken as a whole, this collection presents powerful evidence of the central role music has played in expressing, shaping, and contesting worldwide public attitudes toward the defining event of the early twenty-first century.