onetwothre
I've got a long summer ahead of me, and I'd like to get some reading in... Any suggestions? i'm an english major going into my sophomore year of college. A brief description of the books would be nice, too. Thanks!
Answer
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Tipping points are "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable."[1] Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term, "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."[2] The book seeks to explain and describe enormous and "mysterious" sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do."[3] The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the dramatic drop in the New York City crime rate in the late 1990s.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of Josef Kavalier as a refugee in New York City, where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin Sammy Klayman. Besides having a shared interest in drawing, the two are also fans of the Jewish stage magician Harry Houdini, and share several connections to Houdini: Kavalier (like comics legend Jim Steranko) has actually studied escapology, which aided him in his departure from Europe, and Klayman is the son of the Mighty Molecule, a strongman on the vaudeville circuit.
Klayman gets Kavalier a job as an illustrator for a novelty products company which, due to the recent success of Superman, is attempting to get into the comic-book business. Renaming himself Sam Clay, Klayman starts writing adventure stories, and the two recruit several other Brooklyn teenagers to produce Amazing Midget Radio Comics (named to promote one of the company's novelty items). The magazine features their character the Escapist, an anti-fascist superhero who combines traits of (among others) Captain America, Harry Houdini, Batman, the Phantom, and the Scarlet Pimpernel; the Escapist becomes tremendously popular, but, as often happens, the writers and artists get a minimal share of the publisher's success. Kavalier and Clay are slow to realize that they are being exploited, as they have private concerns: Kavalier is trying to help his family escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, and has fallen in love with a bohemian girl with her own artistic aspirations, while Clay is exploring a secret homosexual life.
Kavalier, driven by hatred of the Nazis, leaves his pregnant would-be fiancée to enlist in the Navy. He returns from service only to find his cousin and former love a couple; the remainder of the novel follows the three characters' attempts to reconstitute a family, and to find a new creative direction for comics.
Many events in the novel are based on the lives of actual comic-book creators including Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Joe Simon, Will Eisner, and Jim Steranko. Other historical figures play minor roles, including Salvador DalÃ, Orson Welles, and Fredric Wertham. The novel's time span roughly mirrors that of the Golden Age of Comics itself, starting from shortly after the debut of Superman and concluding with the Kefauver Senate hearings, two events often used to demarcate the era.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Tipping points are "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable."[1] Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term, "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."[2] The book seeks to explain and describe enormous and "mysterious" sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do."[3] The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the dramatic drop in the New York City crime rate in the late 1990s.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of Josef Kavalier as a refugee in New York City, where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin Sammy Klayman. Besides having a shared interest in drawing, the two are also fans of the Jewish stage magician Harry Houdini, and share several connections to Houdini: Kavalier (like comics legend Jim Steranko) has actually studied escapology, which aided him in his departure from Europe, and Klayman is the son of the Mighty Molecule, a strongman on the vaudeville circuit.
Klayman gets Kavalier a job as an illustrator for a novelty products company which, due to the recent success of Superman, is attempting to get into the comic-book business. Renaming himself Sam Clay, Klayman starts writing adventure stories, and the two recruit several other Brooklyn teenagers to produce Amazing Midget Radio Comics (named to promote one of the company's novelty items). The magazine features their character the Escapist, an anti-fascist superhero who combines traits of (among others) Captain America, Harry Houdini, Batman, the Phantom, and the Scarlet Pimpernel; the Escapist becomes tremendously popular, but, as often happens, the writers and artists get a minimal share of the publisher's success. Kavalier and Clay are slow to realize that they are being exploited, as they have private concerns: Kavalier is trying to help his family escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, and has fallen in love with a bohemian girl with her own artistic aspirations, while Clay is exploring a secret homosexual life.
Kavalier, driven by hatred of the Nazis, leaves his pregnant would-be fiancée to enlist in the Navy. He returns from service only to find his cousin and former love a couple; the remainder of the novel follows the three characters' attempts to reconstitute a family, and to find a new creative direction for comics.
Many events in the novel are based on the lives of actual comic-book creators including Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Joe Simon, Will Eisner, and Jim Steranko. Other historical figures play minor roles, including Salvador DalÃ, Orson Welles, and Fredric Wertham. The novel's time span roughly mirrors that of the Golden Age of Comics itself, starting from shortly after the debut of Superman and concluding with the Kefauver Senate hearings, two events often used to demarcate the era.
on what grounds are books banned?
Crossing t
i need a reliable source with statistics. if you can find them.
not everyone lives in the united states.
books can be banned by school boards or parent organizations in the united states.
Answer
An all too common pastime in the United States is banning books. Sad, frightening -- and far too frequent. Who bans books? Libraries, schools, entire towns, and sometimes, in the past, the United States government.
Banning books isn't something that was done centuries or decades ago. It happens nearly every week somewhere in the United States. Often people take notice of banned books, protest, and the proscription is lifted. Sometimes nobody notices and the banned book stays lost to a school or country.
A banned book is one that has been removed from the shelves of a library, bookstore, or classroom because of its controversial content. In some cases, banned books of the past have been burned and/or refused publication.
A book may be challenged or banned on political, religious, sexual, or social grounds. We take the acts of banning or challenging a book as a serious matter, because these are forms of censorship--striking at the very core of our freedom to read.
A book may be considered a banned book if the work has been banned in the past. We still discuss these books and the censorship surrounding them not only because it gives us insight into the time in which the book was banned, but it also gives us some perspective on books that are banned and challenged today.
James Joyce's Ulysses was prohibited from the United States, and the U.S. Postal Service actually seized copies between 1918 and 1930. The U.S. Postal and Customs Departments have been actively involved in seizing and banning numerous books including Voltaire's Candide, Aristophanes's Lysistrata, Jean-Jacque Rousseau's Confessions, and Chaucer's Canterbury's Tales. Locally, schools and school districts have banned Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, and Little Red Riding Hood. States have been vigorous censorship advocates, as well: Anyone familiar with the history of banning books knows about Tennessee's efforts to bar the teaching of Darwin's Origin of the Species.
What's the state of censorship, banned, and challenged children's books in the twenty-first century? There have been some changes in the last few years. For example, for several years the Harry Potter series was vigorously challenged. By the 2005 Banned Books Week report, the ALA announced, "This year [2004] marks the first in five in which the Harry Potter series does not top or appear on the ALA's annual list." However, a number of the same books that were challenged in the 1990s continue to be challenged in the 2000s.
An all too common pastime in the United States is banning books. Sad, frightening -- and far too frequent. Who bans books? Libraries, schools, entire towns, and sometimes, in the past, the United States government.
Banning books isn't something that was done centuries or decades ago. It happens nearly every week somewhere in the United States. Often people take notice of banned books, protest, and the proscription is lifted. Sometimes nobody notices and the banned book stays lost to a school or country.
A banned book is one that has been removed from the shelves of a library, bookstore, or classroom because of its controversial content. In some cases, banned books of the past have been burned and/or refused publication.
A book may be challenged or banned on political, religious, sexual, or social grounds. We take the acts of banning or challenging a book as a serious matter, because these are forms of censorship--striking at the very core of our freedom to read.
A book may be considered a banned book if the work has been banned in the past. We still discuss these books and the censorship surrounding them not only because it gives us insight into the time in which the book was banned, but it also gives us some perspective on books that are banned and challenged today.
James Joyce's Ulysses was prohibited from the United States, and the U.S. Postal Service actually seized copies between 1918 and 1930. The U.S. Postal and Customs Departments have been actively involved in seizing and banning numerous books including Voltaire's Candide, Aristophanes's Lysistrata, Jean-Jacque Rousseau's Confessions, and Chaucer's Canterbury's Tales. Locally, schools and school districts have banned Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, and Little Red Riding Hood. States have been vigorous censorship advocates, as well: Anyone familiar with the history of banning books knows about Tennessee's efforts to bar the teaching of Darwin's Origin of the Species.
What's the state of censorship, banned, and challenged children's books in the twenty-first century? There have been some changes in the last few years. For example, for several years the Harry Potter series was vigorously challenged. By the 2005 Banned Books Week report, the ALA announced, "This year [2004] marks the first in five in which the Harry Potter series does not top or appear on the ALA's annual list." However, a number of the same books that were challenged in the 1990s continue to be challenged in the 2000s.
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
Posts
Comments :
Post a Comment