Bøger udgivet af Catapult

In the 1800s, the young Clarence King was an icon of the new America: a man of adventure and intellect, a flash-in-the-pan celebrity who combined science and exploration with romanticism and charm. Robert Wilson's biography, "The Explorer King," vividly depicts King's daredevil feats including his journey to the highest peak of the Sierra Nevada, and uncovers the reasons for the shocking decline he suffered after his days on the American frontier. Through King's own rollicking tales, some true, some embroidered, of scaling previously unclimbed mountain peaks, of surviving a monster blizzard near Yosemite, of escaping ambush and capture by Indians, of being chased on horseback for two days by angry bandits, Robert Wilson offers a powerful combination of adventure, history, and nature writing, he also provides the bigger picture of the West at this time. Ultimately, King himself would come to symbolize the collision of science and business, one of the sources of his downfall. Fascinating and extensive, "The Explorer King" movingly portrays the America of the nineteenth century and the man who--for better or worse--typified the soul of the era.

Rei Hayakawa, a lonely, bulimic freelance writer with a drinking problem, wanders into a convenience store. She's swaddled in her coat and scarf, while her thoughts - of alienation, of hunger, of the need for gin and white wine - drift in via stream-of-consciousness. A trucker named Okabe walks in, deliberately grazes her behind, and at the same time, Rei's cell phone, set on vibrate, goes off over her heart. Rei impulsively gets into Okabe's truck with him - and stays. Suddenly she finds herself embarking on a road journey across the wintry landscape of Japan with a complete, and possibly dangerous, stranger. Can the physical relationship that develops between them give Rei what she needs, and can she ever free herself from her self-destructive tendencies? Both parties are wounded, guarded and distant -- can they learn to trust each other? Author Mari Akasaka brings her trademark wordplay and vivid imagery to this compelling story of an unlikely pairing set against the bleak backdrop of Japan's highways. Adapted for the screen in 2003, "Vibrator" has also been made into a film.

During the last days of the Balkan War in the summer of 1995, Anthony, a hapless American questioning the dot-com values that allow him to live a pampered existence in San Francisco, agrees to join Gisela, a beauty he barely knows, in a search for her son, lost in a Hungarian orphanage. In Budapest they meet Marsh, a brilliant but frustrated British war correspondent. Anthony thinks he has found in Eastern Europe what his former life was missing: enterprising young people openly questioning U.S. values, determined to remake their own world. But when an odd and edgy love triangle emerges and he discovers his mission with Gisela is much darker than he imagined, Anthony is thrown further in flux. Moving from the tattered romanticism of Budapest, through the sparkling Dalmatian coast, and into the brutalized landscape of inland Croatia, the novel takes a shocking turn of irreversible consequence."Radiant Days" is held taut in the voice of Anthony, whose desire to experience a more serious (and thrilling) life leaves injury in its wake. With a swift plot and seamless style, Michael FitzGerald delivers a story of unattainable love, misplaced lust, and the politics of compassion.

Since well before Marco Polo's fabled journey, the literature of travel has always made for grand reading. In "The Irish Way: A Walk Through Ireland's Past and Present, Robert Emmett Ginna has written a memorable contribution to the genre, for here is Ireland, viewed by a veteran traveler intent on depicting the country as it truly is and describing what has made Ireland and the Irish what they are today. In his eighth decade, Ginna set out to walk the length of Ireland, some 350 miles from its most northerly point, Malin Head, in Donegal, to Kinsale, on the Atlantic coast of Cork. Familiar with the country for many years, Ginna had seen the influx of high-tech industries and membership in the European Union transform Ireland from a poor, largely agricultural country into the prosperous "Celtic tiger." He wanted to judge for himself what the Irish had gained--and perhaps lost--and what they have preserved from a rich yet tumultuous heritage. Ginna encountered a host of interesting Irish men and women from many walks of life on his trek through three counties of Northern Ireland and ten counties of the Republic. Among them were the soldiers of the British garrison in Omagh, the young woman who directs the annual film festival in strife-scarred Londonderry, the self-made man who founded the Famine Museum at Strokestown, captains of high-tech industries, and farmers whose families have worked their lands for generations. At Birr, he visited the Earl of Rosse in the castle his family has held for nearly four hundred years and where a forebear constructed what was for seventy-five years the world's greatest telescope. In Tipperary, Ginna was regaled at a show by rollicking priests, talked horses with a successful racehorse trainer, and met a gentleman farmer who had unearthed an early medieval chalice valued at more than 6 million. In the thriving city of Cork, the Republic's second largest, Ginna sought out the Lord Mayor, spoke with an innovative police superintendent, explored Cork's vibrant cultural scene, and met the woman who is probably Ireland's youngest feature-film director. And of course, all through his journey, Ginna enjoyed serendipitous encounters with engaging characters in the pubs that are at the center of so much of Irish social life. Weaving song, poetry, and story into his narrative, Ginna brings to life the heroes and rogues, saints and patriots, who have shaped Ireland's turbulent and colorful culture and history.

In this collection of four essays, Hobhouse focuses on the exploitation of timber, tobacco, rubber, and the wine grape, which enormously increased the wealth of those who dealt with them, created new industries, shaped destinies, and changed the course of history.

In the manner of Barbara Tuchman and Paul Johnson, a superior, popular account of how five plants--quinine, sugar, tea, cotton and the potato--have determined the course of history. Illustrated.

In this eye-opening memoir, Carver recalls her extraordinary youth and charts the late-80s, early-90s punk subculture that she helped shape. She recounts how her band Suckdog was born in 1987 and the wild events that followed, in this definitive account of the generation that wanted to break every rule.

Love, with its fear, exhilaration and transcendence, is perhaps the most enduring subject in the literature of the world. About 11 o'clock on a late August night in Manhattan, Bill stops by his local Blockbuster, and in the nearly vacant shop meets an exotic stranger looking for advice on which movie to rent. In their fragmented and awkward first conversation, they exchange phone numbers and she rides away on her bicycle with a copy of Jules and Jim. "At two that morning my phone rang. The machine answered; it was Irina saying how much she liked the movie." Not long after, they meet and soon begin a love affair, filled with tension and tenderness, as they navigate through their separate pasts to find a road to travel together, for as long as their fates allow. Madly is a story of accident and inflected passion, of disruption, erotic and doomed. As Bill comes to realize Irina's disturbed, tenuous hold on reality, his own hold on Irina turns relentless and obsessive.

As powerful now as when first published in 1983, Lynne Sharon Schwartz's third novel established her as one of her generation's most assured writers. In this long-awaited reissue; readers can again warm to this acutely absorbing story. According to Lydia Rowe's friend George, a philosophizing psychotherapist, a "disturbance in the field" is anything that keeps us from realizing our needs. In the field of daily experiences, anything can stand in the way of our fulfillment, he explains--an interrupting phone call, an unanswered cry. But over time we adjust and new needs arise. But what if there's disturbance you can't get past? In this look at a girl's, then a wife and mother's, coming of age, Schwartz explores the questions faced by all whose visions of a harmonious existence are jolted into disarray. The result is a novel of captivating realism and lasting grace.

In a world terrified of desire, "moving at the speed of deviants" is the only way to transform fear into action. These poems by C. A. Conrad vibrate with the vitality of unrepentant queer culture, where the right to act on basic needs can be a battleground, and everyday acts of love and devotion take the form of political defiance. This brilliant barrage of words was inspired by the work of the fast-moving "deviants" whose very existence changes society.

A poetic deconstruction of America through one of its key documents -- in the tradition of Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Allen Ginsburg -- this collection by noted poet-performer Jen Benka consists of one poem (in sequence) for each of the 52 words that comprise the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Her revision of America's secular prayer finds the unspoken hopes and frustrations of people marginalized from the political process. She expresses a profound regard for the possibility of America, while delineating the many ways in which America fails to deliver on its promise -- and below that, what is happening to the individual psyches within a nation that has lost faith in itself.

Originally published: 1st Owl book ed. New York: H. Holt, 1994.

On a daily basis police save lives, take lives, and risk their own lives. This is the first collection that allows us to see this: police officers not just as brutalisers or heroes but as complicated human beings in a position that is sometimes terrifying, sometimes rewarding and often questionable. It is this exploration of the dynamic point of understanding that makes Off The Cuffs unique. Existing books on police and policing give us a single point-of-view, a black and white story that portrays cops as either saints or villains. Divided into four sections - Eyewitnesses, Insiders, Victims & Perpetrators, and Dreamers - Off The Cuffs gives us a diversity of voices, telling stories of fear, apprehension, love, brutality, death, sorrow, joy, hope and resolve. Out of this multiplicity of voices: convicts, police, bike messengers and established poets such as Charles Simic, Martin Espada, Kevin Young and Colette Inez - emerges a dialogue showing us the infinite shades of blue that surround the profession and the profession's relationship to the society they are sworn to protect.Off The Cuffs adds an important and unheard piece to this body of work: the usually disparate voices of cops, prisoners and everyone in between engaging with one another within the pages of one book.