Only In America

Larry Evans is an innocent man, and the president of the United States keeps tweeting about him. While on a business trip to New Jersey, Larry is having a relaxing drink at the hotel bar. The next day, he stands in front of a judge, facing assault charges. He didn’t do anything, but tell that to the multiple eye witnesses. The case whips up a media frenzy, and soon everyone is chiming in on his guilt or innocence—including state and federal officials. Larry loses his job and spends his days behind bars, reading the media reports swirling around him. When video surveillance footage of the night at the hotel bar surfaces, Larry enlists the help of Benjamin Dowds, an attorney with a dubious background, to sue everyone who has wronged him. And if he plays his cards right, he might just expose the corruption at the heart of the American government before they shut him down. If only the American government were in charge.

In Only In America, ​discover unique, strange, funny, record-breaking and downright unbelievable facts about every state in the USA.

Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

How does a film script by an unknown writer get to be read by a Hollywood studio boss? What happens if he loves it? And what do his people do, if they have no idea who wrote it? Stuck in workaday London, rejected by the literary elite, wannabe screenwriter Milly has no idea of the pandemonium her script is causing Stateside. And so it falls to LA movie executive Mitch to cut through the Hollywood madness, save his own job, and rescue Milly from obscurity. All he has to do is find her. So begins a breathless romantic hunt, and a hilarious modern day fairytale from a sensational new voice in contemporary comic fiction.

Get to know the wild and wacky 50 states with the fun-filled Only in America Activity Book, packed with games, puzzles, facts, and more.

For 150 years scientists at the Rothamsted Experimental Station have studied aspects of plant nitrogen nutrition and amino acid biosynthesis. This book is the result of a meeting held to mark this century and a half of work there. The papers look at the significant progress in understanding the biochemistry of amino acids recently achieved, in the light of this history of research. Leading researchers from around the world have contributed authoritative chapters on protein amino acids, non-protein amino acids, betaines, glutathione, polyamines and other secondary metabolites derived from amino acids. As well as being essential in some animals' nutrition, these compounds can have important roles in defending against herbivores, insects and disease. An understanding of these compounds can help in devising better crop protection and production methods.

"Marvelous . . . A vital book about how to make political art that offers lasting solace in times of great trouble, and wisdom to audiences in the years that follow."- Washington Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR A STONEWALL BOOK AWARDS HONOR BOOK The oral history of Angels in America, as told by the artists who created it and the audiences forever changed by it--a moving account of the AIDS era, essential queer history, and an exuberant backstage tale. When Tony Kushner's Angels in America hit Broadway in 1993, it won the Pulitzer Prize, swept the Tonys, launched a score of major careers, and changed the way gay lives were represented in popular culture. Mike Nichols's 2003 HBO adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Mary-Louise Parker was itself a tour de force, winning Golden Globes and eleven Emmys, and introducing the play to an even wider public. This generation-defining classic continues to shock, move, and inspire viewers worldwide. Now, on the 25th anniversary of that Broadway premiere, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois offer the definitive account of Angels in America in the most fitting way possible: through oral history, the vibrant conversation and debate of actors (including Streep, Parker, Nathan Lane, and Jeffrey Wright), directors, producers, crew, and Kushner himself. Their intimate storytelling reveals the on- and offstage turmoil of the play's birth--a hard-won miracle beset by artistic roadblocks, technical disasters, and disputes both legal and creative. And historians and critics help to situate the play in the arc of American culture, from the staunch activism of the AIDS crisis through civil rights triumphs to our current era, whose politics are a dark echo of the Reagan '80s. Expanded from a popular Slate cover story and built from nearly 250 interviews, The World Only Spins Forward is both a rollicking theater saga and an uplifting testament to one of the great works of American art of the past century, from its gritty San Francisco premiere to its starry, much-anticipated Broadway revival in 2018.