Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-Fiction

Following in the wake of "War in the Age of Intelligent Machines", Manuel De Landa presents a synthesis of historical development over the last one thousand years. The work sketches the outlines of a renewed materialist philosophy of history in the tradition of Fernand Braudel, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, while also engaging the critical new understanding of material processes derived from the sciences of dynamics. Working against prevailing attitudes that see history as an arena of texts, discourses, ideologies, and metaphors, De Landa traces the concrete movements and interplays of matter and energy through human populations in the last millennium. The result is a study of human societies and their mobile, semistable forms: cities, economies, technologies, and languages. De Landa attacks three domains that have given shape to human societies: economics, biology, and linguistics. In every case, what one sees is the self-directed processes of matter and energy interacting with the whim and will of human history itself to form a panoramic vision of the West free of rigid teleology and naive notions of progress, and free of any deterministic source of its urban, institutional, and technological forms. Rather, the source of all concrete forms in the West's history are shown to derive from internal morphogenetic capabilities that lie within the flow of matter-energy itself.

In this rowdy collection of pop culture essays, Aisha Tyler brings her razor-sharp wit and sweet irreverence to bear on everything from light beer, dating strategies, and music videos to women’s self-image, the Ms. Foundation, and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

Both comical and scathing, Aisha uses hilarious stories from her own life to investigate the mysteries of platonic friendship between men and women, compare male and female strip-club behavior, and answer, once and for all, whether size matters. Swerve is fresh, ambitious, and shocking—a "Gordian knot" of pop culture observations that will fascinate and engage postmodern girls and guys alike.

”What’s this all about, then?”
Such is the first line spoken between Ryun Horn and Chris Baker--The Author and The Narrator of a book entitled LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL, a book that will eventually become SWERVE. They are, in essence, the same person. They have come together at a median in Time, a position outside of time in fact, from which each of them--The Author, existing in The Present, and The Narrator, creating a swath through the past--are able to communicate at varied intervals. The Narrator (Chris) explains to The Author (Ryun) that it is his intention to kill himself once this selfsame novel arrives at completion. His wish is to transmit his life story to The Author, in literary form, that it may be recorded for posterity.
Chris Baker, via the first-person idiom, trudges laconically through the details of his early childhood. He then goes on to discuss his adulthood in more decorative lyrics. Meanwhile, The Author has a few things to say from the vantage point of his laptop computer regarding climate change, strange politics, the contemporary state of the world, and the struggles he encounters whilst attempting to be true to the details of that life which is both his own and The Narrator’s. And Chris delves voraciously into the universe of drugs, both illegal and otherwise, all the while maintaining his addiction to literature. He encounters myriad characters, some of whom are profound, some comic, and all fascinating. It is upon his graduation from high school, following a few laggardly attempts at working-life and college, that he realizes his primary designs to travel America.
The Narrator and The Author continue to converse at interludes throughout the narrative. Together, they discuss the nature of Time and Space and what allowances in those seemingly fixed entities permit them to confabulate in such a way. The Author contemporaneously tries to convince The Narrator that his approaching suicide is a fool’s errand. They argue about past events and their reckoning. They commit silly jokes to the nowhere. They frustrate one another like conflicting thoughts inside an individual brain.
Chris Baker travels to California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, et al. He makes friends and he loses them. He struggles with drug addiction. He rages and screams and guffaws to keep alive his own flint of inspiration. He also finds himself ending up continuously in his hometown where he falls in love, creates a minor poet’s fame, and fritters to cast a meaning for himself.
Throughout these escapes and escapades, The Author remains convinced that the creation of LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL will be their deliverance.
“What’s this all about, then?” The Author asks in summation.
No one answers.

”What’s this all about, then?”
Such is the first line spoken between Ryun Horn and Chris Baker--The Author and The Narrator of a book entitled LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL, a book that will eventually become SWERVE. They are, in essence, the same person. They have come together at a median in Time, a position outside of time in fact, from which each of them--The Author, existing in The Present, and The Narrator, creating a swath through the past--are able to communicate at varied intervals. The Narrator (Chris) explains to The Author (Ryun) that it is his intention to kill himself once this selfsame novel arrives at completion. His wish is to transmit his life story to The Author, in literary form, that it may be recorded for posterity.
Chris Baker, via the first-person idiom, trudges laconically through the details of his early childhood. He then goes on to discuss his adulthood in more decorative lyrics. Meanwhile, The Author has a few things to say from the vantage point of his laptop computer regarding climate change, strange politics, the contemporary state of the world, and the struggles he encounters whilst attempting to be true to the details of that life which is both his own and The Narrator’s. And Chris delves voraciously into the universe of drugs, both illegal and otherwise, all the while maintaining his addiction to literature. He encounters myriad characters, some of whom are profound, some comic, and all fascinating. It is upon his graduation from high school, following a few laggardly attempts at working-life and college, that he realizes his primary designs to travel America.
The Narrator and The Author continue to converse at interludes throughout the narrative. Together, they discuss the nature of Time and Space and what allowances in those seemingly fixed entities permit them to confabulate in such a way. The Author contemporaneously tries to convince The Narrator that his approaching suicide is a fool’s errand. They argue about past events and their reckoning. They commit silly jokes to the nowhere. They frustrate one another like conflicting thoughts inside an individual brain.
Chris Baker travels to California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, et al. He makes friends and he loses them. He struggles with drug addiction. He rages and screams and guffaws to keep alive his own flint of inspiration. He also finds himself ending up continuously in his hometown where he falls in love, creates a minor poet’s fame, and fritters to cast a meaning for himself.
Throughout these escapes and escapades, The Author remains convinced that the creation of LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL will be their deliverance.
“What’s this all about, then?” The Author asks in summation.
No one answers.

The early decades of American popular music are, for most listeners, the dark ages. It wasn't until the mid-1920s that the full spectrum of this music -- black and white, urban and rural, sophisticated and crude -- made it onto records for all to hear. This book brings a forgotten music, hot music, to life by describing how it became the dominant American music -- how it outlasted sentimental waltzes and parlour ballads, symphonic marches and Tin Pan Alley novelty numbers -- and how it became rock 'n' roll. It reveals that the young men and women of that bygone era had the same musical instincts as their descendants Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and even Ozzy Osbourne. In minstrelsy, ragtime, brass bands, early jazz and blues, fiddle music, and many other forms, there was as much stomping and swerving as can be found in the most exciting performances of hot jazz, funk, and rock. Along the way, it explains how the strange combination of African with Scotch and Irish influences made music in the United States vastly different from other African and Caribbean music; shares terrific stories about minstrel shows, 'coon' songs, whorehouses, knife fights, and other low-life phenomena; and showcases a motley collection of performers heretofore unknown to all but the most avid musicologists and collectors.<

• ISBN13: 9781601622327
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

What should have been a normal day for Romia Smith turned into a life-changing chain of events. She was a high-heeled, leather wearing, skilled in the martial arts, and motorcycle riding bad-to-the-bone chick. The symbol of the Phoenix she has everywhere represents more than her strength. On that day someone frames her for the death of a man she does not even know and the worst part is...she is a cop. However, as the pieces began to fall into place, Romia was not sure about what was real and what was a lie. Her instincts told her to trust no one. Will her life ever be normal again? Or would she rise up out of the ashes like a Phoenix into a new and exciting life?

Winner of the 2008 Autumn House Fiction Prize selected by Sharon Dilworth, the 14 kinetic stories of Drift and Swerve swirl around characters in motion, hungry for connection or disconnection, struggling with violence and sexual emptiness, bad decisions and unintended consequences. A family flees a dying grandmother, pursing and nearly killing a drunk driver. A man abandoned by his wife becomes involved in a violent sexual relationship as he struggles to become a parent to his daughter. An adolescent girl runs to Providence, steals drug money to escape an empty relationship and runs to Austin, still searching for love, though she knows she has as much chance as anyone -- none. These are stories of connection and fracture, struggle and survival, dignity and disgrace, stories of isolation and the sparks of intimacy that reanimate hope.