Bøger udgivet af Four Winds Press

A new collection that oscillates between erudition and slapstick, from Virgil and Dante to a man who juggles his eyeballs.The poems of I Could Have Been More Wrong come out of nowhere to proclaim eccentric half-truths with deceptive simplicity. Declaring that the spirit of life is the spirit of play, Kevin McCaffrey delights in confronting the cacophonies of experience and trying to make them rhyme. These verses, mostly set in traditional forms, draw energy from the joy of singing out, almost spontaneously, about the sometimes quirkily ordinary vicissitudes of being.

Mad Men meets the Foreign Service in this candid depiction of the hidden worlds of a high-functioning alcoholic.From the main line of Philadelphia to the summer scene in Bar Harbor ME, William Newlin grew up surrounded by adults who made the cocktail hour seem glamorous. At boarding school and Harvard, and at his first diplomatic posting in Paris, Newlin seemed to lead a charmed life - except for a habit of secret drinking that grew from year to year.The deception continued through many assignments, both overseas in Guatemala, Brussels, and Nice, and in Washington, D.C. at the Operation Center, the State Department crisis control hub. Newlin meticulously recounts the routines he established for each venue, playing a game of cat-and-mouse with his colleagues, family, and friends.We are periodically reminded of alcohol's role in the '50s and '60s culture of white male privilege, but there have been few first-hand accounts. Drunk at the State Department tells that story with candor and erudition, providing a glimpse into a patrician, vanishing world.

Sacred Bones is based on the true story of Deusdona (Gods gift), a ninth-century Roman deacon who worked in the catacombs, digging up worthless bones and selling them off as the holy remains of saints and martyrs. Deusdona thanked God for his worldly success, but he was also a clever businessman who knew how to strike deals with abbots and kings. It didnt hurt that no church could be sanctified without a relic in residence, and that the more relics a church displayed, the more pilgrims came to visit with their coins and their prayers.Deusdona was a Willy Loman of the Dark Ages, trafficking in bones. Every spring, when the snows melted from the Alpine passes, he traveled north with his samples arms, cheek bones, toes filling orders from the previous summer and drumming up business for the year to come.Whether he is floating in the buff in Charlemagnes baths or gathering body parts in Romes underground City of the Dead, Deusdona offers us a vivid portrait of daily life in the early Middle Ages at an early stage in the transformation of ancient Rome into the City of God.Sacred Bones is both a medieval whodunit and a wry portrait of an age that has seldom been brought to life in such detail. Readers will relish the chance to immerse themselves in this oddly contemporary world.

In March 1964, a secret task force of United States warships and tankers set sail from the Caribbean bound for Brazil. The flotilla, which had the code name Operation Brother Sam, included the worlds largest aircraft carrier, several destroyers, a troop carrier, and three tankers. Its purpose was to support the Brazilian military in its meticulously planned coup d'tat against President Joo Goulart, which was successfully completed on April 1.In this work of fiction, Peter Hornbostel deftly weaves fact and fiction to draw a classic example of U.S. intelligence operations in Latin America out of the shadows, and to speculate on what the role of the United States may have been. The novels protagonist, Ambassador Anthony Carter, maneuvers to influence unfolding events despite being kept in the dark by the CIA and the Brazilian military. Although the success of the coup is inevitable, the novel demonstrates how U.S. hegemony mixed with Cold War hostilities to escalate the crisis, and how the outcome could have been much worse.In addition to the political intrigue, this is the story of Ambassador Carters love affair with his Brazilian mistress, Marina, a woman as sultry and intriguing as the city of Rio that is the backdrop to their romance. Carter is torn between the deceptions that surround him in his public role and the intoxicating honesty of his private life, both integral to his identity as the Ambassador to Brazil.

In Buenos Aires, a corrupt cop is assigned to investigate a murder he committedCommissioner Miguel Fortunato is nearing retirement after a long, dishonest career. Six months ago he was ordered to kidnap foreigner Robert Waterbury for reasons left unclear. The kidnapping turned to murder. Now the Americans are sending their own investigator, and Fortunato is assigned to support her.Fortunato is quickly drawn into the dazzling world of his victim, a failed novelist who came to Buenos Aires desparate to make a big score. As he uncovers the vast outlines of a global crime, Fortunato begins to unravel not only the murder, but the deeper mystery of his own career and the lies that have sustained it.

What does it mean when people say You cant compare apples and oranges? Are comparisons across genres inherently invalid, or can they be insightful and illuminating? In this brilliant and provocative collection of essays, Dutch author Maarten Asscher maintains that comparisons can be the highest form of argument.Asscher makes his case with examples drawn from classical to contemporary history, art, and literature: Hamlet in Ithaca and Telemachus in Elsinore, the Mediterranean and the North Sea, writing from a prison cell and writing from a room at home, the suicide of Primo Levi and Japanese Kamikaze pilots, and so on. With graceful erudition and idiosyncratic wit, Asscher demonstrates how the comparative method can provide insight not only into two subjects simultaneously, but also into fundamental issues they may have in common.

Politics is everywhere these days; we are drowning in it. The Voyage of the UnderGod holds up a mirror to this sad state of affairs by creating a world animated by partisan political feeling, every utterance up for grabs as an allusion or parody or gag or prank or desperate cry for help.In a reality TV show a 19th-century tall ship sails the south Atlantic, doubling back to Rio de Janeiro, then down the coast to the deadly Cape Horn. Its celebrity captain is Luther Dorsey, a presidential hopeful whose back-story combines elements of Reagan, Limbaugh, and George W. The tone is mock-heroic yet charged with dramatic intensity as Luther makes his last grasp at the greatness he thinks he deserves.

An invitation from a dead man propels a Chicago plumber on a perilous journey from Hong Kong to Inner Mongolia in search of a fabled map of the Invisible World. Stylish, elegant and thrilling, Stuart Cohen's debut novel draws readers into a treacherous world of artists and smugglers, duplicitous friends and seductive enemies.

Inspired by the spirit and approach of Bertolt Brecht's Manual of Piety, the poems of Laughing Cult often employ the structures of ballads, folksongs, and other traditional forms to create miniature sketches marked by romantic ambiguity, occultism, science fiction, and quirky angst. As cool in tone as a Lee Konitz solo and as lacking in affect as pop art, this first collection includes numerous poems that have appeared on the Exquisite Corpse website. To shape something aesthetically charged out of the spent elements and enervated thoughts of a slowly failing society: that's the challenge Laughing Cult has set for itself. These are two-dimensional poems for a one-dimensional age.