The long-awaited memoir from one of the most celebrated modern dancers of the past fifty years: the story of her own remarkable career, of the formative years of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and of the two brilliant, iconoclastic, and forward-thinking artists at its center—Merce Cunningham and John Cage. From its inception in the l950s until her departure in the l970s, Carolyn Brown was a major dancer in the Cunningham company and part of the vibrant artistic community of downtown New York City out of which it grew. She writes about embarking on her career with Cunningham at a time when he was a celebrated performer but a virtually unknown choreographer. She describes the heady exhilaration—and dire financial straits—of the company’s early days, when composer Cage was musical director and Robert Rauschenberg designed lighting, sets and costumes; and of the struggle for acceptance of their controversial, avant-garde dance. With unique insight, she explores Cunningham’s technique, choreography, and experimentation with compositional procedures influenced by Cage. And she probes the personalities of these two men: the reticent, moody, often secretive Cunningham, and the effusive, fun-loving, enthusiastic Cage. Chance and Circumstance is an intimate chronicle of a crucial era in modern dance, and a revelation of the intersection of the worlds of art, music, dance, and theater that is Merce Cunningham’s extraordinary hallmark.

Sabermetrics, the search for objective knowledge about baseball through statistical analysis, has taken over the national pastime. The authors argue that this approach began as a useful corrective but has come to harm baseball. The book demonstrates that the so-called moneyball approach, based on sabermetrics, offers only limited guidance for assembling a team, managing games, and evaluating player performance. Equally important, the obsession with statistics and vision of the game as wholly predictable obscure baseball's spectacular improvisational quality. It is the game's unquantifiable and relentless capacity to surprise--the source of wonder so central to its greatest stories and personalities--that informs any real appreciation of baseball.

The acclaimed director of such films as Brideshead Revisited shares the story of his youth and career, providing coverage of such topics as his childhood as the son of star Geraldine Fitzgerald, his relationships with Hollywood elite and the allegations that Orson Welles was his real father.

This is a novel about appearance versus reality – how our lives and relationships appear to others versus how they are experienced, and the complex ways that social class shapes identity, relationships, and the codes of friendship. American Circumstance also provides a window into the replication of wealth, power, and privilege. The novel can be used as supplemental reading in courses across the disciplines that deal with gender, social class, inequality, power, family systems, relational communication, intimate relationships, identity, American culture, narrative or creative writing. It can also be read in book clubs or entirely for pleasure. “American Circumstance is wonderful! The characters and story invite you into a world that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Highly recommended!!” – Carl Leggo, Ph.D., University of British Columbia “American Circumstance kept me up! I wanted to see how the characters’ lives untangled. I loved how Leavy challenged my cultural assumptions. Students will have a lot to talk about as they discover the 'sociology of everyday life' embedded in the fiction.” – Laurel Richardson, Ph.D., The Ohio State University “The characters were so compelling that I couldn’t stop reading ... a great beach read, or class text.” – U. Melissa Anyiwo, Ph.D., Curry College “Leavy writes in an engaging way that helps you ask important questions about class issues in America. This story keeps you interested and wondering why women make the choices they do.” – Margaret A. Robbins, The Journal of Language & Literacy Education “American Circumstance is one of my favorite texts to assign to my sociology students.” – Cheryl Llewellyn, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Lowell Patricia Leavy, Ph.D., is an award-winning independent sociologist and best-selling author.

Moving beyond victimhood and into mastery, is the life-changing premise of Master of Circumstance, a timeless rendition on overcoming victimhood and the insidious snares of negative thinking that debilitate millions of people everyday. This book, written by first-time author James Morgan, was born out of his real-life experiences of growing up poor in a steel town in the Midwest. Never having met his father and raised by a struggling single-mother, James became a byproduct of his environment. In this book, he shares the psychological techniques, mindset shifts, and practical tools he used to get his life on track and out of the victim mindset. He shares in a way that anyone can use to take back control and ownership of their life, no matter how disempowering their current or past circumstances may seem. In his authorial debut, James walks the reader through a poignant narrative on how to shatter the illusions of the victim mindset once and for all, and step into their true power as a master of their circumstances. As the name implies, this book is highly transformational and is the result of decades of James's personal trial and error before he found his true calling in life: becoming a family-focused licensed therapist and counselor. Today, James helps families grow stronger by harnessing the power of accountability while finding relief from blame, guilt, and the traumas of their past. His mission is to help people around the world achieve inner mastery over their lives.

Time travel is metaphysically possible. Nikk Effingham contends that arguments for the impossibility of time travel are not sound. Focusing mainly on the Grandfather Paradox, Effingham explores the ramifications of taking this view, discusses issues in probability and decision theory, and considers the potential dangers of travelling in time.