Publisher description

From Melbourne to Monza, 'The Pits' humanizes the mechanized world of elite motor racing, revealing the reality behind the stories that make the headlines. It depicts the full throttle experience of watching the race from the pit lane.

Like his more famous contemporary Upton Sinclair, American author BENJAMIN FRANKLIN NORRIS, JR. (1870-1902) also highlighted the corruption and greed of corporate monopolies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... themes that continue to make his work riveting reading more than a century later. The Pit, first published in 1903, is a fictional narrative of the dealing in the Chicago wheat pit, focusing on speculator Curtis Jadwin, who is so addicted to his own greed that it becomes his downfall. The second part of Norris's projected "Trilogy of the Epic of the Wheat," *The Pit is preceded by 1901's The Octopus, also available from Cosimo. (Norris died before he could write the third volume, The Wolf.)

A teacher tortured by his students finally explodes in a violent rage. Exhausted Salarymen are pushed beyond the brink. Blood, sweat and screams of 'FUCK YOU!' pour out of the characters within The Pits of Hell, and yet a sense of humour always shines through. Bold, absurd and all too real, Ebisu Yoshikazu's work feels distinctly underground, almost punk. The Pits of Hell collects eight classic stories by Ebisu Yoshikazu, originally published between 1969 and 1981. The collection features a foreword by Minami Shinbo and an essay by Ryan Holmberg placing Ebisu Yoshikazu and his work into context.

Written at the height of Stalin's first "five-year plan" for the industrialization of Soviet Russia and the parallel campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit registers a dissonant mixture of utopian longings and despair. Furthermore, it provides essential background to Platonov's parody of the mainstream Soviet "production" novel, which is widely recognized as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Russian prose. In addition to an overview of the work's key themes, it discusses their place within Platonov's oeuvre as a whole, his troubled relations with literary officialdom, the work's ideological and political background, and key critical responses since the work's first publication in the West in 1973.

Set in a small-town, sub-Arctic dive bar, this debut poetry collection explores the complexities of addiction and the person beneath, and the possibility of finding home and community in unexpected places. Among Borin’s poems are portraits of the bar’s regular customers and employees—recurring characters, like those who might appear in a dark and unconventional sitcom. The religious night janitor catalogues the day’s sins; the retired barmaid gussies up at the mirror; the regular customers and their regular habits are described to a new employee: “R has a two-drink limit. A likes a coaster. Remember, / Mrs. O takes a chilled pilsner glass / with her bottle of Blue.” In the melancholy atmosphere of the bar and the rooms upstairs, the speakers of Borin’s poems find unexpected solace and belonging. The habits, the routine, the regulars, the predictability of it all brings some kind of chaotic order to chaotic life: We drink without even having to think about it, because it feels good to lose control, feels like regaining it.

A coffee table book that catalogs the research of Howard Conyers, PhD through visual imagery of investigating the contributions of blacks in barbecue from 2013 to 2020. There are several essays that explains various perspectives of barbecue culture.