Invigorating creative nonfiction—short, but never slight—gathered by the co-editor of In Short and In Brief. In the years since the perennially popular In Short and In Brief were published, readers have come to delight in the deft focus of the succinct piece we now call The Short. Extending this trend, Short Takes presents over seventy-five writers whose range and style demonstrate the myriad ways we humans have of telling our truths. Themes develop and speak to or collide with one another: musings about parents, childhood, sports, weather, war, solitude, nature, loss—and, of course, love. The stellar roster of contributors includes well-known writers—Verlyn Klinkenborg, Jo Ann Beard, David Sedaris, Dorothy Allison, Salman Rushdie, and Terry Tempest Williams—along with Michael Perry, Mark Spragg, Jane Brox, and others whose literary stars are clearly rising. Each short—whether a few paragraphs or reaching 2,000 words, and reflecting almost every way nonfiction can be written—invites us to experience the power of the small to move, persuade, and change us.

Original Comedy/Jokes, Glorious Nostalgia, Astounding Science, Thought provoking Satire/Take-offs, Gripping Short Stories, Deep Mystical musings, Self-Help, and even a novel about saving of the universe and the fall of an Empire. Plus, the Theory of Everything deeply explored.

SHORT TAKES: A Scene-based Taiwanese Vocabulary Builder lets you pick up new vocabulary in a fun, context-based way. Each lesson is based on 10 high-frequency core vocabulary words brought together in an easy-to-visualize scene, which makes learning new words simple and enjoyable. Each core vocabulary word is presented with closely-related words, sentence patterns, common pairings, or example usages, so you'll learn the word within the broader context of the language. Every lesson also features an imaginative short story designed to help foster a more intuitive sense of grammar, usage, and tone for core vocabulary words. Rendered in both English and natural Taiwanese sentences, the short story highlights core vocabulary words in their full native context. Additional cultural notes related to the theme for each lesson provide even more context and background, helping you retain the new vocabulary and discover more of Taiwan's history, food, people, and society. This vocabulary builder is well-suited for self-study by beginning and elementary learners of Taiwanese. Taiwanese (a form of Southern Min or Min Nan language, related to Amoy and Hokkien, and sometimes also referred to as Hoklo) is a language spoken by about 70% of the population in Taiwan. Features include: 1) 800+ commonly used words and phrases in 20 thematic lessons, 2) Explanations on grammar, usage, and cultural background, 3) Audio for core vocabulary words, related words, short stories, and exercises available for download, 4) Index with fully cross-referenced entries and definitions, 5) Tone changes (tone sandhi) marked throughout text with detailed tone numbers provided in answer key, 6) Exercises for both writing and speaking, to help reinforce understanding of core vocabulary, 7) Official Romanization (Tai-lo) and character script used by Taiwan's Ministry of Education

Foreword by Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson From a top mental conditioning coach—"the world’s best brain trainer” (Sports Illustrated)—who has transformed the lives and careers of elite athletes, business leaders, and military personnel, battle-tested strategies that will give you tools to manage and overcome negativity and achieve any goal. He knows how to win. More, he knows the many ways-subtle, brutal, often self-inflicted-we lose. As the most trusted mental coach in the world of sports, Trevor Moawad has worked with many of the most dominant athletes and the savviest coaches. From Nick Saban and Kirby Smart to Russell Wilson, they all look to Moawad for help finding or keeping or regaining their competitive edge. (As do countless business leaders and members of special forces.) Now, at last, Moawad shares his unique philosophy with the general public. He lays out lessons he's derived from his greatest career successes as well as personal setbacks, the game-changing wisdom he's earned as the go-to whisperer for elite performers on fields of play and among men and women headed to the battlefield. Moawad's motivational approach is elegant but refreshingly simple: He replaces hardwired negativity, the kind of defeatist mindset that's nearly everybody's default, with what he calls "neutral thinking." His own special innovation, it's a nonjudgmental, nonreactive way of coolly assessing problems and analyzing crises, a mode of attack that offers luminous clarity and supreme calm in the critical moments before taking decisive action. Not only can neutral thinking raise your performance level-it can transform your overall life. And it all starts, Moawad says, with letting go. Past failures, past losses-let them go. "The past isn't predictive. If you can absorb and embrace that belief, everything changes. You'll instantly feel more calm. And the athlete-or employee or parent or spouse-who's more calm is also more aware, and more times than not ... will win."

Formerly a hardcover from Random House, Michael Meltsner's Short Takes is available again in eBook format. Short Takes is Meltsner's unsettling first novel about a lawyer for whom love and work are always intertwined, a man who no longer believes in rules but continues to live by them. Jeremy is a lover who refuses to let go, a New Yorker at odds with the harsh pace and fractious spirit of his city until in the end he negotiates his own terms. “Short Takes, Michael Meltsner's engaging and extremely well written first novel, creates a character of enormous vitality and considerable charm: funny, caring, searching and all-too-humanly paradoxical.” — Boston Globe Crisscrossing Manhattan, Jeremy, a New York lawyer uneasy with success, confronts his doubts through a series of encounters with the hard-edged, unpredictable life of the city. Revealed through these meetings, friendships and events are war stories of the courtroom and of the analytic couch; memories of Lenny Bruce and Jackie Robinson; the wiles of clever lawyers, Washington in-fighters, of a boss called the Soft Killer, of celebrity poker players and would-be reformers; recollections of frontier Israel and rural Georgia in the sixties. Behind Jeremy lies a brash West Side youth spent amid ethnic gangs and McCarthyism, the special ways of an only child, an idealist out of phase.

In Smith's third volume in an award-winning homage to street-court basketball, 12 poems are delivered in short, quick lines that twist and streak and dribble their way downcourt, finally slam dunking their verses with amazing dexterity. Full-color photos.

The legendary CIA spy is back—in a “superb” collection featuring an all-new novella, by the New York Times–bestselling author of Six Days of the Condor (Publishers Weekly, starred review). James Grady, “king of the modern espionage thriller” (George Pelecanos, award-winning writer/producer of The Wire), first introduced his clandestine CIA operative—codename: Condor—in a debut novel that became Three Days of the Condor, one of the key films of the paranoid era of the 1970s, and is now the basis for the hit AT&T original series, Condor, starring Max Irons and William Hurt. In this explosive collection featuring a new introduction on the writing and publication history of Condor, a never-before-published original novella, and short fiction collected for the first time, Grady brings his covert agent into the twenty-first century. From the chaos of 9/11 to the unprecedented Russian cyber threats, Condor is back. In condor.net, the intelligence analyst chases an unfathomable conspiracy that begins in Afghanistan and leads to the secrets of his own superiors. In Caged Daze of the Condor, Jasmine Daze of the Condor, and Next Day of the Condor, the paranoia of National Security’s sworn soldier reaches a screaming pitch when he’s locked behind the walls of the CIA’s private insane asylum. Classified documents in the basement of the Library of Congress draw Condor into a murderous subterranean world where no one can be trusted in Condor in the Stacks. And in Russian Roulette of the Condor, the striking new novella shot through with the biggest spy scandal since the Cold War, the underground patriot faces a dictator determined to turn American politics into an insidious spy game. Brace yourself for six shots of the iconic Condor from James Grady, who has been called a “master of intrigue” by John Grisham, and whose prose was compared to George Orwell and Bob Dylan by the Washington Post.

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This gathering of autobiographical essays focuses on different experiences and periods of the author’s life and hybrid identity: a childhood spent in Austria, teenage years in an American school and then a lycèe in France, coming to the U.S. as a young adult and attending college, studying in England for two years, and then settling permanently in the U.S. into an academic career. The word “essay” in the title is meant in its original or French sense, as an attempt or trial. The twenty-four items in this gathering are a kaleidoscopic collection of such attempts at different modes of self-reflexivity. They are arranged not so much in the chronological order of their composition as by way of loosely assembled thematic clusters. “True lies” suggests that by transforming lived experiences into language--by way of memory, imagination, and reflection--and often years and decades later, we inevitably alter them as we write them down. But we also re-experience them, and in so doing shift them into another register. These recollections cover a wide range of experiences: Stelzig’s early years, his absurd encounter with a barber in Salzburg, his mysterious Buddha experience in Hong Kong, his travel misadventure in Spain, his career as an aspiring poet, his commitment to teaching Shakespeare’s plays, his love of dogs and of tennis, and the death of a nineteen-year old Austrian au pair girl. True Lies is divided into three parts. “Austrian Roots” addresses Stelzig’s early years, including his relationship with his Austrian parents. “Adult Branchings” focuses on his American adult life and identity. The final section, “Falling Leaves,” is for the most part a set of reflections on the later stages of life and the sense of mortality and of time running out—the challenge of “being in time” and the question of “what remains.”