An inspiring memoir and self-help guide to greatness by the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov calls “fearlessness and intelligence combined . . . potent and beautiful.” Called “the Evel Knievel of Dance,” Elizabeth Streb has been pushing boundaries and testing the potential of the human body since childhood. Can she fly? Can she run up walls? Can she break through glass? How fast can she go? With clarity and humor—and with her internationally-renowned dance troupe STREB—she continues to investigate what movement truly is and has come to these conclusions: It’s off the ground! It creates impact! And it hurts trying to stop! Here, Streb combines memoir and analysis to convey how she became an extreme action dancer and choreographer, developing a form of movement that’s more NASCAR than modern dance, more boxing than ballet, and more than most people can handle “in this dizzying, inspirational self-help” books (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Provides a guide to achieving the one-hundred-mile-per-day biking goal, sharing counsel on how to customize a fitness-based training plan, select a bicycle and equipment, and use fueling and hydration strategies.

The Evel Knievel of dance creates a new way of seeing the body in action.

Marla Streb's remarkable metamorphosis from girl next door to Gravity Goddess will change the way you look at extreme sports athletes and your own life. Written for everyone who ever sat at a desk pushing a pencil and daydreamed of glory, Downhill offers hope and inspiration. Just don't let your boss catch you with it. Book jacket.

Death, dying and burial produce artefacts and occur in spatial contexts. The interplay between such materiality and the bereaved who commemorate the dead yields interpretations and creates meanings that can change over time. Materiality is more than simple matter, void of meaning or relevance. The apparent inanimate has meaning. It is charged with significance, has symbolic and interpretative value—perhaps a form of selfhood, which originates from the interaction with the animate. In our case, gravestones, bodily remains and the spatial order of the cemetery are explored for their material agency and relational constellations with human perceptions and actions. Consciously and unconsciously, by interacting with such materiality, one is creating meaning, while materiality retroactively provides a form of agency. Spatiality provides more than a mere context: it permits and shapes such interaction. Thus, artefacts, mementos and memorials are exteriorised, materialised, and spatialized forms of human activity: they can be understood as cultural forms, the function of which is to sustain social life. However, they are also the medium through which values, ideas and criteria of social distinction are reproduced, legitimised, or transformed. This book will explore this interplay by going beyond the consideration of simple grave artefacts on the one hand and graveyards as a space on the other hand, to examine the specific interrelationships between materiality, spatiality, the living, and the dead. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Mortality.

While frustration with various aspects of American democracy abound in the United States, there is little agreement over—or even understanding of—what kinds of changes would make the system more effective and increase political participation. Matthew J. Streb sheds much-needed light on all the major concerns of the electoral process in the thoroughly revised third edition of this timely book on improving American electoral democracy. This critical examination of the rules and institutional arrangements that shape the American electoral process analyzes the major debates that embroil scholars and reformers on subjects ranging from the number of elections we hold and the use of nonpartisan elections, to the presidential nominating process and campaign finance laws. Ultimately, Streb argues for a less burdensome democracy, a democracy in which citizens can participate more easily in transparent, competitive elections. This book is designed to get students of elections and American political institutions to think critically about what it means to be democratic, and how democratic the United States really is. Part of the Controversies in Electoral Democracy and Representation series, edited by Matthew J. Streb.