Architecture and photography share the condition of being suspended between fine art and craft. Realism is considered a given, something that happens almost by default. From the moment it is taken, a photograph is understood to be a record of what was in front of the camera--just as a building, as soon as it is inhabited, becomes the fixed backdrop for everyday life. In Epics in the Everyday, Jes s Vassallo explores this condition, tracing a series of collaborations between architects and photographers from the postwar years up to the present. Consistently, the subject matter of these collaborations is the built environment, which presents architects and photographers--in different ways--with a mirror that challenges the idea of realism in their respective disciplines. Beyond casting a diagonal light on important developments within the two individual disciplines, the book chronicles an alternative history of both modern architecture and photography and builds a case for a specific type of realism found at their intersection.

It’s your life, in your own words. In this one-year guided journal from artist Mary Kate McDevitt, every entry sparks creativity and self-reflection with inspiring prompts, upbeat affirmations, and interactive doodles. Chronicle big plans and budding ideas. Jot down daydreams or forecast your mood. Rate the day’s accomplishments: major, minor, or meh? With quirky humor and vibrant illustrations, every page is a celebration of the adventures, discoveries, and joys that make your life uniquely epic.

During the past fifty years, documentary photography and architecture have become increasingly interdependent, blurring the disciplinary boundary between the two. Seamless looks at the work of a new generation of European photographers and architects working together to produce images of architecture made from fragments of reality. At the same time, it investigates how shared digital technologies influence the creation of architecture and its photographic representation through images. Based on a series of interviews, Seamless discusses the collaborations between Filip Dujardin and Jan De Vylder, Philipp Schaerer and Roger Boltshauser, and Bas Princen and OFFICE Kersten Geers David van Severen. Each of the three sections is illustrated with a series in images that form parallel narratives within the book. In the concluding essay, architect Jes s Vassallo pulls together the treads of the conversations to investigate questions about the impact of digital technology on the value assigned to images, how shared technological platforms enhance the influence photographers and architects have on each other, and why they have often chosen to focus on the dirty realism of the urban spaces.

Epics have lost their charm. There was a time when you finished an epic. When an epic left you feeling not discontent and exhausted, but joyous, melancholy, rejuvenated, satisfied -- left you feeling that you were a better person for the experience. TWENTY EPICS will bring that feeling back. In ten thousand words or less. All-new stories from Christopher Rowe, Tim Pratt, Alan DeNiro, Rachel McGonagill, K.D. Wentworth, Marcus Ewert, Christopher Barzak, Meghan McCarron, Stephen Eley, Jon Hansen, Paul Berger, David Schwartz, Sandra McDonald, Jack Mierzwa, Mary Robinette Kowal, Zoe Selengut, Ian McHugh, Yoon Ha Lee, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Scott William Carter. Edited by David Moles and Susan Marie Groppi.

The diary as a genre is found in all literate societies, and these autobiographical accounts are written by persons of all ranks and positions. The Diary offers an exploration of the form in its social, historical, and cultural-literary contexts with its own distinctive features, poetics, and rhetoric. The contributors to this volume examine theories and interpretations relating to writing and studying diaries; the formation of diary canons in the United Kingdom, France, United States, and Brazil; and the ways in which handwritten diaries are transformed through processes of publication and digitization. The authors also explore different diary formats, including the travel diary, the private diary, conflict diaries written during periods of crisis, and the diaries of the digital era, such as blogs. The Diary offers a comprehensive overview of the genre, synthesizing decades of interdisciplinary study to enrich our understanding of, research about, and engagement with the diary as literary form and historical documentation.

This generously illustrated book explores the connections between Thomas Hart Benton’s art and Hollywood movies from groundbreaking perspectives. Thomas Hart Benton was a thoroughly American artist. His regionally focused paintings and murals depicted everyday American life as well as the country’s history. This volume focuses on one of the most American of Benton’s associations: Hollywood. Not only did Benton create commissioned murals and portraits of film stars and movies, but he also developed a style that was highly theatrical and narrative. This volume is the first to collect all the works conceived by Benton for the film industry. It includes related ephemera, photographs, and documents of Benton at work, along with a series of thought-provoking essays that explore a diverse array of topics—from Benton’s engagement with American identity from the 1920s to the 1960s, to parallels between Benton’s use of Old Master methods and film production techniques. Fans of Thomas Hart Benton will find surprising insights into his career, while those fascinated by Hollywood history will discover how one of America’s most revered artists shaped and was in turn influenced by the film industry.

It seems incredible that heretofore there has not been an introductory anthology of African epics presented in English. Western literary culture has long emphasized the heritage of such well-known epics as the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Aeneid. But it is only recently that scholars have turned their attention toward capturing the rich oral tradition that is still alive in Africa. The twenty-five excerpts in this volume have been selected and introduced so as to offer English-speaking readers a broad sample of the extensive epic traditions in Africa. The general introduction and the background on each epic will enable readers to understand the context of each epic and will also provide leads for further inquiry.

Ken Follett's extraordinary historical epic, the Century Trilogy, reaches its sweeping, passionate conclusion. In Fall of Giants and Winter of the World, Ken Follett followed the fortunes of five international families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—as they made their way through the twentieth century. Now they come to one of the most tumultuous eras of all: the 1960s through the 1980s, from civil rights, assassinations, mass political movements, and Vietnam to the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidential impeachment, revolution—and rock and roll. East German teacher Rebecca Hoffmann discovers she’s been spied on by the Stasi for years and commits an impulsive act that will affect her family for the rest of their lives. . . . George Jakes, the child of a mixed-race couple, bypasses a corporate law career to join Robert F. Kennedy's Justice Department and finds himself in the middle of not only the seminal events of the civil rights battle but a much more personal battle of his own. . . . Cameron Dewar, the grandson of a senator, jumps at the chance to do some official and unofficial espionage for a cause he believes in, only to discover that the world is a much more dangerous place than he'd imagined. . . . Dimka Dvorkin, a young aide to Nikita Khrushchev, becomes an agent both for good and for ill as the United States and the Soviet Union race to the brink of nuclear war, while his twin sister, Tanya, carves out a role that will take her from Moscow to Cuba to Prague to Warsaw—and into history.

Even though Rocket is the fastest kid in third grade, his dyslexia makes him a slow reader. When he finds coded notes, Rocket knows he needs the help of his friends, the Gumshoe Gang. Together they try crack the secret messages but kind they are stuck. Can the Gumshoe gang crack this case? Is Mrs. Flores in danger? And is the new computer teacher really an alien? These mysteries are perfect for your early fluent reader. With longer sentences and fewer illustrations, these are suited to keep readers guessing as they solve for clues. • Extensive back matter • Underlying issues related to friends, family, and growing up • Keeps kids guessing with false clues

Taking cues from Walter Benjamin’s fragmentary writings on literary-historical method, Late Colonial Sublime reconstellates the dialectic of Enlightenment across a wide imperial geography, with special focus on the fashioning of neo-epics in Hindi and Urdu literary cultures in British India. Working through the limits of both Marxism and postcolonial critique, this book forges an innovative approach to the question of late romanticism and grounds categories such as the sublime within the dynamic of commodification. While G. S. Sahota takes canonical European critics such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer to the outskirts of empire, he reads Indian writers such as Muhammad Iqbal and Jayashankar Prasad in light of the expansion of instrumental rationality and the neotraditional critiques of the West it spurred at the onset of decolonization. By bringing together distinct literary canons—both metropolitan and colonial, hegemonic and subaltern, Western and Eastern, all of which took shape upon the common realities of imperial capitalism—Late Colonial Sublime takes an original dialectical approach. It experiments with fragments, parallaxes, and constellational form to explore the aporias of modernity as well as the possible futures they may signal in our midst. A bold intervention into contemporary debates that synthesizes a wealth of sources, this book will interest readers and scholars in world literature, critical theory, postcolonial criticism, and South Asian studies.