Penguin Gentlemen

The dapper staff of The Watering Hole are always eager to serve their clientele with grace and charm. But little do the patrons know that these handsome gents are actually penguins in disguise! The sharply dressed flightless birds love all that the human world offers, but as the saying goes: “You can take the penguin out of the Antarctic, but you can’t take the Antarctic out of the penguin!”* *Not all penguins come from the Antarctic.**** Yes, this actually matters in the world of Penguin Gentlemen.

David Gentleman has lived in London for almost seventy years, most of it on the same street. This book is a record of a lifetime spent observing, drawing and getting to know the city, bringing together work from across his whole career, from his earliest sketches to watercolours painted just a few months ago. Here is London as it was, and as it is today: the Thames, Hampstead Heath; the streets, canals, markets and people of his home of Camden Town; and at the heart of it all, his studio and the tools of his work. Accompanied by reflections on the process of drawing and personal thoughts on the ever-changing city, this is a celebration of London, and the joy of noticing, looking and capturing the world. 'David has spent a lifetime depicting with wit and affection a London he has made his own' Alan Bennett 'He delivers a poetry of exultant concentration ... The surface fusion of the sensuous and the sharply modern is echoed by Gentleman's imagery' Guardian 'The artist and illustrator has been responsible for some of the most-seen public artworks in this country' The Times 'Perhaps the last of the great polymath designer-painters' Camden New Journal

"The term "macaroni" was once as familiar a label as "punk" or "hipster" is today. In this handsomely illustrated book devoted to notable 18th-century British male fashion, award-winning author and fashion historian Peter McNeil brings together dress, biography, and historical events with the broader visual and material culture of the late 18th century. For thirty years, macaroni was a highly topical word, yielding a complex set of social, sexual, and cultural associations. Pretty Gentlemen is grounded in surviving dress, archival documents, and art spanning hierarchies and genres, from scurrilous caricature to respectful portrait painting. Celebrities hailed and mocked as macaroni include politician Charles James Fox, painter Richard Cosway, freed slave Julius "Soubise," and criminal parson Reverend Dodd. The style also rapidly spread to neighboring countries in cross-cultural exchange, while Horace Walpole, George III, and Queen Charlotte were active critics and observers of these foppish men."--Publisher's website.

When asked to name an archetypal love story, most people will reply 'Romeo & Juliet', although some say 'Tristan & Isolde' instead. Very few will come up with a classical example, and the reason for this is simple: when you say archetypal, it is assumed you mean love between a man and a woman, and instances of this in classical accounts are rare. The reason for this is also not hard to find: as it does now, 'love' in the ancient world meant the affection of equals, and given the inferior position of women in Greek and Roman society, between the sexes is not usually where love is to be found. Straightforward examines how we got from there to here. It is a study not of the loves of real people, but of the ideal of love as it found expression in stories, stories which were often retold and reimagined by new generations and new cultures. By following these stories and the changes they underwent through the centuries Straightforward attempts to answer two related questions: 'When and why did the heterosexual ideal become normative in our narrative tradition?' and 'What was there before?' We begin in archaic Greece, with a story which was already old when Homer composed his epics...

The Two Gentlemen of Verona doesn’t enjoy a high reputation among Shakespeareans. As an early comedy, it suffers from internal inconsistencies and a questionable resolution. However, having produced and directed a radio version of the play (for WSUI in Iowa City, Iowa), I have partial feelings for the work. Thus, I ask that the play be taken for what it is: somewhat flawed but generally rewarding.

Surveys the work of Evelyn Waugh and his literary explorations of the themes of Catholicism, society and the family.

"The challenge, then, is not to invent new victims or new scapegoats but to mobilize America for the future. What would it take to ensure that all of us can succeed at getting the job done, the problem solved, and the future more secure?" As a student at Yale Law School in 1974, Lani Guinier attended a class with a white male professor who addressed all the students, male and female, as "gentlemen." To him the greeting was a form of honorific, evoking the values of traditional legal education. To her it was profoundly alienating. Years later Guinier began a study of female law students with her colleagues, Michelle Fine and Jane Balin, to try to understand the frustrations of women law students in male-dominated schools. Women are now entering law schools in large numbers, but too often many still do not feel welcome. As one says, "I used to be very driven, competitive. Then I started to realize that all my effort was getting me nowhere. I just stopped caring. I am scarred forever." After interviewing hundreds of women with similar stories, the authors conclude that conventional one-size-fits-all approaches to legal education discourage many women who could otherwise succeed and, even more, fail to help all students realize their full potential as legal problem-solvers. In Becoming Gentlemen Guinier, Fine, and Balin dare us to question what it means to become qualified, what a fair goal in education might be, and what we can learn from the experience of women law students about teaching and evaluating students in general. Including the authors' original study and two essays and a personal afterword by Lani Guinier, the book challenges us to work toward a more just society, based on ideals of cooperation, the resources of diversity, and the values of teamwork.