As he challenges classical semiological accounts of cultural representation in this ethnography of Melanesian religious phenomenology, Thomas Maschio shows that ritual and poetic performance are about the enactment, expression, and invention of the self. Maschio demonstrates how such emotions as nostalgia, anger, sadness, and grief are creatively transformed during the course of religious performance and expression into a form of cultural memory--one that juxtaposes a pattern of cultural meaning with the emotional feeling of plenitude the Melanesian Rauto call makai. Evoked during initiation, mourning, and agricultural rites, and figuring prominently in Rauto discourse about the self, makai joins personal memory to patterned sets of images and meanings that Westerners would call culture.

When Marie-Therese, daughter of Marie Antoinette, slips into the streets of Paris at the height of the French Revolution, she finds a world much darker than what she's ever known. When Marie-Thérèse Charlotte of France learns of the powerful rebellion sweeping her country, the sheltered princess is determined to see the revolution for herself. Switching places with a chambermaid, the princess sneaks out of the safety of the royal palace and into the heart of a city in strife. Soon the princess is brushing shoulders with revolutionaries and activists. One boy in particular, Henri, befriends her and has her questioning the only life she's known. When the princess returns to the palace one night to find an angry mob storming its walls, she's forced into hiding in Paris. Henri brings her to the workshop of one Mademoiselle Grosholtz, whose wax figures seem to bring the famous back from the dead, and who looks at Marie-Thérèse as if she can see all of her secrets. There, the princess quickly discovers there's much more to the outside world - and to the mysterious woman's wax figures - than meets the eye.

As he challenges classical semiological accounts of cultural representation in this ethnography of Melanesian religious phenomenology, Thomas Maschio shows that ritual and poetic performance are about the enactment, expression, and invention of the self. Maschio demonstrates how such emotions as nostalgia, anger, sadness, and grief are creatively transformed during the course of religious performance and expression into a form of cultural memory--one that juxtaposes a pattern of cultural meaning with the emotional feeling of plenitude the Melanesian Rauto call makai. Evoked during initiation, mourning, and agricultural rites, and figuring prominently in Rauto discourse about the self, makai joins personal memory to patterned sets of images and meanings that Westerners would call culture.

An album-by-album celebration of the life and music of Mac Miller through oral histories, intimate reflections, and critical examinations of his enduring work. “One of my most vivid memories of him is the way he would look at you while he was playing you a song. He tried to look you right in the eyes to see how you were feeling about it.” —Will Kalson, friend and first manager Following Mac Miller’s tragic passing in 2018, Donna-Claire Chesman dedicated a year to chronicling his work through the unique lens of her relationship to the music and Mac’s singular relationship to his fans. Like many who’d been following him since he’d started releasing mixtapes at eighteen years old, she felt as if she’d come of age alongside the rapidly evolving artist, with his music being crucial to her personal development. “I want people to remember his humanity as they’re listening to the music, to realize how much bravery and courage it takes to be that honest, be that self-aware, and be that real about things going on internally. He let us witness that entire journey. He never hid that.” —Kehlani, friend and musician. The project evolved to include intimate interviews with many of Mac’s closest friends and collaborators, from his Most Dope Family in Pittsburgh to the producers and musicians who assisted him in making his everlasting music, including Big Jerm, Rex Arrow, Wiz Khalifa, Benjy Grinberg, Just Blaze, Josh Berg, Syd, Thundercat, and more. These voices, along with the author’s commentary, provide a vivid and poignant portrait of this astonishing artist—one who had just released a series of increasingly complex albums, demonstrating what a musical force he was and how heartbreaking it was to lose him. “As I’m reading the lyrics, it’s crazy. It’s him telling us that he hopes we can always respect him. I feel like this is a message from him, spiritually. A lot of the time, his music was like little letters and messages to his friends, family, and people he loved, to remind them of who he really was.” —Quentin Cuff, best friend and tour manager

Electric Literature 25 Best Novels of 2014 Largehearted Boy Favorite Novels of 2014 "An extraordinary new literary talent."--The Daily Telegraph "In part a portrait of the artist as a young woman, this deceptively modest-seeming, astonishingly inventive novel creates an extraordinary intimacy, a sensibility so alive it quietly takes over all your senses, quivering through your nerve endings, opening your eyes and heart. Youth, from unruly student years to early motherhood and a loving marriage--and then, in the book's second half, wilder and something else altogether, the fearless, half-mad imagination of youth, I might as well call it—has rarely been so freshly, charmingly, and unforgettably portrayed. Valeria Luiselli is a masterful, entirely original writer."--Francisco Goldman In Mexico City, a young mother is writing a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. In Harlem, a translator is desperate to publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet. And in Philadelphia, Gilberto Owen recalls his friendship with Lorca, and the young woman he saw in the windows of passing trains. Valeria Luiselli's debut signals the arrival of a major international writer and an unexpected and necessary voice in contemporary fiction. "Luiselli's haunting debut novel, about a young mother living in Mexico City who writes a novel looking back on her time spent working as a translator of obscure works at a small independent press in Harlem, erodes the concrete borders of everyday life with a beautiful, melancholy contemplation of disappearance. . . . Luiselli plays with the idea of time and identity with grace and intuition." —Publishers Weekly

**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** 'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful,' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal What makes life worth living in the face of death? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father. Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both. 'A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living' Nigella Lawson

DEAD MAN RIDING Clint Adams has seen many a peculiar sight during his travels across the frontier. But none have startled him more than the dead man seated ramrod straight on the back of a runaway horse—tied to the saddle, and tortured to boot. Before burying the man, Clint finds a letter in his pocket addressed to Bonnie Shaughnessey of Estes Canyon, Utah. Hospitality and hostility go hand in hand in Estes Canyon. The warm welcome Clint receives from the sultry owner of the local eatery is nearly eclipsed by the rough treatment he receives from those on both sides of the law. It seems the dead man had his share of enemies—and they're looking to put the Gunsmith out to pasture...