'Literary hand grenades, raising difficult questions about the world in which we live' - Guardian In the sixteen stories of The Not-Dead and The Saved, Kate Clanchy turns her clear gaze and remarkable honesty on what it means to be a mother or a child; to struggle alone; to seek comfort in love; to be present; to be sane. Lithe prose and crackling wit carry us from comedy to tragedy and back again, and create a bold cast of characters that includes even a few delightfully famous names. The much-lauded title story won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2009, and the collection as a whole more than delivers on that promise. It celebrates Kate Clanchy's gift for clarity, empathy and surprise, and confirms her as one of the finest writers of our time.

Populists on both sides of the political aisle routinely announce that the American Dream is dead. According to them, the game has been rigged by elites, workers can’t get ahead, wages have been stagnant for decades, and the middle class is dying. Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, disputes this rhetoric as wrong and dangerous. In this succinctly argued volume, he shows that, on measures of economic opportunity and quality of life, there has never been a better time to be alive in America. He backs his argument with overwhelming—and underreported—data to show how the facts favor realistic optimism. He warns, however, that the false prophets of populism pose a serious danger to our current and future prosperity. Their policies would leave workers worse off. And their erroneous claim that the American Dream is dead could discourage people from taking advantage of real opportunities to better their lives. If enough people start to believe the Dream is dead, they could, in effect, kill it. To prevent this self-fulfilling prophecy, Strain’s book is urgent reading for anyone feeling the pull of the populists. E. J. Dionne and Henry Olsen provide spirited responses to Strain’s argument.

The Past Is Not Dead is a collection of twenty-one literary and historical essays that will mark the 50th anniversary of the Southern Quarterly, one of the oldest scholarly journals (founded in 1962) dedicated to southern studies. Like its companion volume, Personal Souths, The Past Is Not Dead features the best of the work published in the journal. Essays represent every decade of the journal's history, from the 1960s to the 2000s. Topics covered range from historical essays on the French and Indian War, the New Deal, and Emmett Till's influence on the Black Panther Party to literary figures including William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers. Important regional subjects like the Natchez Trace, the Yazoo Basin, the Choctaw Indians, and Mississippi blues are given special attention. Contributors range from noted literary critics such as Margaret Walker Alexander, Virginia Spencer Carr, Susan V. Donaldson, James Justus, and Willie Morris to scholars of African-American studies such as Robert L. Hall and Manning Marble and historians including John Ray Skates, Martha Swain, and Randy Sparks. Collectively, the essays in this volume enrich and illuminate our understanding of southern history, literature, and culture.

Master shredder Terry Syrek makes it easy to become a rock lead-guitar virtuoso. Discover monster chop-building exercises and the secret to mind-bending, super-fast, sweep-picking licks. Plus, make creative use of the pentatonic scale and other scales you wouldn't necessarily think of using. 48 pages. DVD running time: 60 minutes.

This volume will provide a comparative account of the meanings and processes of post-socialist transformations in education by exploring recent theories, concepts, and debates on post-socialism and globalization in national, regional, and international contexts.

Cuba has suffered a lot, but it is not because of Fidel Castro. It is true that things could have been different but longing for the non-existent is a weakness and not a strength. The strength lies in accepting reality and facing it, and that is what the Cuban people did when faced with the dilemma of being one more colony of the United States in the American continent as is, for example, Puerto Rico. God and history gave Cuba, my dear Cuba, the leaders it deserved for a very decisive period of its recent history. Commander Fidel was above all, a Thinker, and like all those who think, he was often wrong. Perhaps Cuba's greatest success and the glory of its Revolution has been precisely the rise of that people and nation, the rise of their cultural and intellectual level, nationalism, which will prepare them to defend for many generations their independence, their wealth and thus create prosperity for all. At least, that is the version of a great majority but, for its critics, there will always remain the echo of the word dictatorship which, on the ground, is the only state and the survival option of the Cuban regime in its state of cold war and blockade for almost a century. Fidel Castro Ruz was a great man, a man of the world, who presented to the world the soul of the Cuban people, and it is better to keep that, because we are all memories and points and data in history, just that. Thank you for reading these lines Javier Clemente Engonga, 13.07.2021

Every ten years in the strange little town of Lennon, California, one person is chosen to return from the dead... Wilson Moss entered the town’s top-secret contest in the hopes of resurrecting her ex-best friend Annie LeBlanc, but that doesn’t mean she thought she’d actually win. Now Annie’s back and Wil’s ecstatic—does it even really matter that Annie ghosted her a year before she died...? But like any contest, there are rules, and the town’s resurrected dead can only return for thirty days. When Wil discovers a loophole that means Annie might be able to stay for good, she’s desperate to keep her alive. The potential key? Their third best friend, Ryan. Forget the fact that Ryan openly hates them both, or that she and Wilson have barely spoken since that awkward time they kissed. Wil can put it aside for one month; she just needs to stop thinking about it first. Because Wil has one summer to permanently put an end to her loneliness—it’s that, or lose her only friends...again. But along the way, she might have to face some difficult truths about Annie’s past and their friendship that, so far, she’s left buried.