Teachers are really performers, classrooms are stages, and students the captivated audience. In beautiful prose, Felman invites us to watch her one woman show on the art of performance in today's classrooms. These essays take on the greatest hits of the academy: identity politics, sexual harrassment, academic censorship, and radical pedagogy. Felman's book is a performance not to be missed.

Lost! Hidden quietly away in the dark attic, and waiting for discovery. The story of a young man, and his friend as they discover hidden gems of his family's history.

Extraordinary people lead extraordinary lives and, from the beginning, even before he had any control over his life, John Meigs’ life was extraordinary: kidnapped by his father, never to see his mother again. Once on his own, he tried his hand as a reporter in Los Angeles in 1936, and then in Honolulu, where he got drawn into the art world, becoming one of the original designers of the Hawaiian aloha shirts. Those pursuits were interrupted with the onset of World War II and John’s enlistment in the Navy. After a serendipitous escape of death and military duty in Florida, John returned to Hawaii, where he met New Mexico artist Peter Hurd. That encounter led John to New Mexico and to interactions with a wide variety of notable people, including painters Andrew Wyeth and Georgia O’Keeffe, poet Witter Bynner, oilman and cattleman Robert O. Anderson, and actor Vincent Price. With the notable artist Rolf Armstrong, of “pin-up girl” calendar fame, John traveled to Paris in 1952 where his off-beat nature led him to Alice B. Toklas. After returning to New Mexico, numerous opportunities knocked on John’s door, beckoning him in different directions all at the same time. In 1979, his travels led to a particularly significant development in John’s life when he picked up a hitchhiker, who became a complicated fixture in his life as both a sidekick and a love object. Meig’s fascinating life continued to unfold, garnering attention and impacting those close to him. As can happen, though, even with the most accomplished and creative, eventually, a sad, slow mental decline set in.

George Plawski was born in Gdynia, Poland, in 1934. His father, Eugene, was a senior naval officer who fought in both World Wars in the capacities of pilot, and as the commander of surface ships as well as submarines. Before the war, he lived with his wife Maria in Warsaw. Never a Dull Moment lives up to its title as George takes us back to his youth under the Nazis in WW2, describes his and his mother’s separate escapes from Communist occupied Poland to join his father who spent the war years in the Polish Navy in England, and their subsequent immigration to Canada in 1948. This colorful memoir traces the family’s unusual history, and recalls the severe hardships which faced his parents in starting their lives anew in this beautiful and free, yet in the in the immediate post-war years, a thoroughly challenging land. In a series of humorously recalled anecdotes, the author portrays the process leading to his commission in the Royal Canadian Navy, to obtaining his wings, and to becoming a pilot flying off the aircraft carrier, HMCS Bonaventure. After leaving the service in 1964, Plawski returned to UBC to finish his BA, then completed three years of post-graduate studies in theatre, specialising in directing, which was funded by his summer job flying air tankers on forest fires. The book continues with suspenseful accounts of Plawski’s founding of Vancouver’s City Stage, the thrilling saga of the often hair-raising pioneering days of firebombing in California and in Canada, and of the hilarious aerial circus of budworm spraying in New Brunswick. This story is embellished with a telling of his meeting with a beautiful and cultured girl from Paris whose name is Rita; of their unconventional romance, their travels around the world, of her loving and essential collaboration in the author’s idiosyncratic lifestyle, and of their eventual marriage which is happily doomed to continue to the end of this grand adventure.

Hassler Whitney was a giant of twentieth-century mathematics. This biography paints a picture of him and includes dozens of revealing anecdotes. Mathematically, he had a rare detector that went off whenever he spotted a piece of mathematical gold, and he would then draw countless pictures, gradually forging a path from hunch to proof.

Victor was born before WWII, grew up during the war in England and was greatly influenced by watching the Battle of Britain first hand. Upon completion of his education at Colfe's School he did his two years of National Service in the R.A.F. During the next four years he used his spare time and money to enroll in Jim Russell's Racing Driver's School and to learn to fly at Croydon Aerodrome. Emigration to the U.S.A. followed, where he gained his Commercial Pilot's License, doing mostly crop-dusting in open-cockpit biplanes for three years, before being hired by T.W.A. He spent nearly thirty years with T.W.A., ending his career as Captain on the Lockheed 1011 and the Boeing 747. Foreseeing the demise of T.W.A., he flew in command of L-1011's for two years with Air Lanka in Sri Lanka, with B-747's on a HAJJ contract in Saudi Arabia and finally in charge of a private 747SP, first for the President of Kazakhstan, then for the Sultan of Brunei's family. He is captivated with the romance of flight in all its different forms, has a passion for foreign languages, martial arts and travel, especially to China and Russia. These two countries have been in his purview all his life, they are a constant source of world political intrigue.

"David Hepworth, an ardent music fan and well regarded critic, was twenty-one in '71, the same age as many of the legendary artists who arrived on the scene. Taking us on a tour of the major moments, the events and songs of this remarkable year, he shows how musicians came together to form the perfect storm of rock and roll greatness, starting a musical era that would last longer than anyone predicted. Those who joined bands to escape things that lasted found themselves in a new age, its colossal start being part of the genre's staying power"--Amazon.com.

This beautifully written, meticulously detailed, highly engaging book is a rare treat. It evokes a vanished world of railways that achieved extraordinary things logistically while using what is by modern standards distinctly old-fashioned technology. Lifelong railwayman Terry Collins takes the reader on a journey into the heart of what working on the railways between 1962 and 1996 was like, from the days of steam, to the dawn of the modern railway age. The book is also a real eye-opener about many of the behind-the-scenes incidents the public never hears about. 'Never a Dull Moment' is an absolutely unforgettable book As Terry himself says: 'I really enjoyed working on the railways. We had our tragedies, sadly, but we also dealt with many other challenging incidents, including some bizarre ones, and when we won, against the odds, and got the trains and people moving again, it was a great feeling! I say "e;we"e; because this book is also very much about the many people in the signal boxes, Traffic Control, stations, yards and on the track, that I worked with, some of them "e;larger than life"e; characters, but almost without exception, determined to win. And we did!'