Mr Spaceman

“A surprisingly sweet and droll first-person account of the vexed attempts of an alien to understand the bafflingly unpredictable human race.” —Kirkus Reviews The Pulitzer Prize–winning author “raises fin de siècle literature to new heights and turns inevitability on its head” in a novel of an alien named Desi (Publishers Weekly). For decades, Desi has kept a quiet vigil above the Earth while studying the confusing, fascinating, and frustrating primary species of our planet, occasionally venturing to the planet’s surface to hear their thoughts and experience their memories using his empathic powers. Now, on December 31, 2000, he prepares for the final phase of his mysterious mission, which begins when he beams a tour bus bound for a Louisiana casino aboard his ship. The twelve passengers will be the last humans whose lives he will experience before he positions his spaceship in full and irrefutable view of the people of Earth and descends to the planet’s surface to proclaim his presence to all of humanity at the turn of the millennium. Poignant, funny, and charming, Mr. Spaceman is filled with unexpected twists and turns, a tribute to the powers of love and understanding and the essence of what it means to be human. “Funny and humane, entertaining and touching.” —The New York Times

The Powells.com Interviews presents twenty-two candid conversations with a remarkable selection of critically acclaimed authors and artists. Novelists, journalists, travel writers, a famous photographer, a radio host, a pop star… The subjects interviewed in this special collection have earned the highest honors in publishing—a Pulitzer Prize, two Booker Prizes, a National Book Award, a PEN/Faulkner Award, a Newbery Medal, and inclusion in the recent Best American Short Stories of the Century collection, to list just a few. Their work is enjoyed by fans around the world. From children’s books to suspense novels, poetry to portrait photography, the titles produced by these talented men and women represent the best of contemporary publishing. Here, the authors discuss their influences and shed light on the creative process—they invite you inside their books. Readers will gain new appreciation for some of their favorite works and find many more recommended titles to enjoy years into the future. Featured: Michael Ondaatje, Annie Leibovitz, Roddy Doyle, Ha Jin, Mary Higgins Clark, Susan Orlean and many others.

An intriguing rites-of-passage tale about a space-obsessed boy. Thomas Moon is a space freak, he sends daily e-mails to Junior NASA and hunts the web sites for space news and stories. Imagine his excitement when he recieves a mysterious e-mail, addressed to Mister Spaceman, suggesting he's been selected for astronaut status.

“I glanced out the window as my train pulled into the station and saw the girl who killed my son.” So begins Josh Rolnick’s powerful debut collection of eight stories, which utilizes a richly focused narrative style accenting the unavoidable tragedies of life while revealing the grace and dignity with which people learn to deal with them. The stories—four set in New Jersey and four in New York—span the wide geographic tapestry of the area and demonstrate the interconnectedness of both the neighboring states and the residents who inhabit them. In “Funnyboy,” a grief-stricken Levi Stern struggles to come to terms with the banality of his son’s accidental death at the hands of Missy Jones, high school cheerleader. In “Pulp and Paper,” two neighbors, Gail Denny and Avery Mayberry, attempt to escape a toxic spill resulting from a train derailment when a moment of compassion alters both their futures forever. “Innkeeping” features a teenager’s simmering resentment toward the burgeoning relationship between his widowed mother and a long-term hotel guest. “The Herald” introduces us to Dale, a devoted reporter on a small-town newspaper, desperately striving to break a big-time story to salvage his career and his ego. A teenager deals with the inconceivable results of his innocent act before an ice hockey game in “Big Lake.” And in “The Carousel,” a Coney Island carousel operator confronts the fading memories of a world that once overflowed with grandeur and promise. Throughout, Rolnick’s characters search for a firm footing while wrestling with life’s hardships, finding hope and redemption in the simple yet uncommon willingness to act. Pulp and Paper captures lightning in a bottle, excavating the smallest steps people take to move beyond grief, heartbreak, and failure—conjuring the subtle, fragile moments when people are not yet whole, but no longer quite as broken.

The Routledge Handbook of Pink Floyd is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals and fans of the band. It brings together international researchers to assess, evaluate and reformulate approaches to the critical study and interpretation of one of the world’s most important and successful bands. For the first time, this Handbook will ‘tear down the wall,’ examining the band’s collective artistic creations and the influence of social, technological, commercial and political environments over several decades on their work. Divided into five parts, the book provides a thoroughly contextualised overview of the musical works of Pink Floyd, including coverage of performance and sound; media, reception and fandom; genre; periods of Pink Floyd’s work; and aesthetics and subjectivity. Drawing on art, design, performance, culture and counterculture, emergent theoretical resources and analytical frames are evaluated and discussed from across the social sciences, humanities and creative arts. The Handbook is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals. It will appeal across a range of related subjects from music production to cultural studies and media/communication studies.

Popular Music Theory and Analysis: A Research and Information Guide uncovers the wealth of scholarly works dealing with the theory and analysis of popular music. This annotated bibliography is an exhaustive catalog of music-theoretical and musicological works that is searchable by subject, genre, and song title. It will support emerging scholarship and inquiry for future research on popular music.