We use social media to facilitate the process of communication. But how well do we concisely communicate our messages and feelings? There are certain drawbacks to new-age technologies, especially due to the need for conciseness. The written word has always carried the meaning and essence of thoughts and feelings that we strive to convey. Similes, metaphors, and sayings from regional areas and time periods specifically carry more meanings than the mere word itself. The 2,300 idioms or sayings in this book convey a meaning that connects generation to generation in the south of our country. Meet the family members that communicated daily and shared their stories using this unique language that is colorful and historical. My aunt, Arlie Wilder, used to say that she hated to see a woman grinning and laughing out loud with her mouth open like “Jenny eatin’ saw briars.” I hope you find yourself laughing like that as you read.

"The guide to attaining the gratitude that frees our spirit helps us to appreciate more deeply, family, community, the earth and ourselves." -- Back cover.

Claude has an intuitive faith in something splendid and feels at odds with his contemporaries. The war offers him the opportunity to forget his farm and his marriage of compromise; he enlists and discovers that he has lacked. But while war demands altruism, its essence is destructive

“The Contrast“, which premiered at New York City's John Street Theater in 1787, was the first American play performed in public by a professional theater company. The play, written by New England-born, Harvard-educated, Royall Tyler was timely, funny, and extremely popular. When the play appeared in print in 1790, George Washington himself appeared at the head of its list of hundreds of subscribers. Reprinted here with annotated footnotes by historian Cynthia A. Kierner, Tyler’s play explores the debate over manners, morals, and cultural authority in the decades following American Revolution. Did the American colonists' rejection of monarchy in 1776 mean they should abolish all European social traditions and hierarchies? What sorts of etiquette, amusements, and fashions were appropriate and beneficial? Most important, to be a nation, did Americans need to distinguish themselves from Europeans—and, if so, how? Tyler was not the only American pondering these questions, and Kierner situates the play in its broader historical and cultural contexts. An extensive introduction provides readers with a background on life and politics in the United States in 1787, when Americans were in the midst of nation-building. The book also features a section with selections from contemporary letters, essays, novels, conduct books, and public documents, which debate issues of the era.

A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squireathough he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own fortune and Sophia follows him to London to escape an arranged marriage, the adventure begins. A vivid Hogarthian panorama of eighteenth-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections, "Tom Jones" is one of the greatest and most ambitious comic novels in English literature.

Winner of the Irish Book Award Finalist for the Booker Prize This “affecting” debut is “reminiscent of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying” as it paints a vivid portrait of a working-class community in contemporary rural Ireland (New York Times Book Review). “One of my favorite Irish books . . . Moving, atmospheric and beautiful.” —Tana French In the aftermath of Ireland’s financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As violence flares, the characters face a battle between public persona and inner desires. Through a chorus of unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds. The Spinning Heart speaks for contemporary Ireland like no other novel. Wry, vulnerable, all-too human, it captures the language and spirit of rural Ireland and with uncanny perception articulates the words and thoughts of a generation. Technically daring and evocative of Patrick McCabe and J.M. Synge, this novel of small-town life is witty, dark, and sweetly poignant. Donal Ryan’s brilliantly realized debut announces a stunning new voice in fiction. Irish Book of the Decade (Dublin Book Festival) First Book Award (The Guardian) “Newcomer of the Year” and “Book of the Year” (Irish Book Award) “Best Book of the Year” (Library Journal)

Here are twelve deeply moving short stories from the perceptive pen of Cynthia Rylant. Each captures the moment when someone's life changes -- when an animal causes a human being to see things in a different way, and, perhaps, changes his life.