Roy S World

A tie-in to the new documentary, Roy's World, directed by Rob Christopher narrated by Lili Taylor, Matt Dillon and Willem Dafoe, these stories comprise one of Barry Gifford's most enduring works, his homage to the gritty Chicago landscape of his youth Barry Gifford has been writing the story of America in acclaimed novel after acclaimed novel for the last half-century. At the same time, he's been writing short stories, his "Roy stories," that show America from a different vantage point, a certain mix of innocence and worldliness. Reminiscent of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Gifford's Roy stories amount to the coming-of-age novel he never wrote, and are one of his most important literary achievements--time-pieces that preserve the lost worlds of 1950s Chicago and the American South, the landscape of postwar America seen through the lens of a boy's steady gaze. The twists and tragedies of the adult world seem to float by like curious flotsam, like the show girls from the burlesque house next door to Roy's father's pharmacy who stop by when they need a little help, or Roy's mom and the husbands she weds and then sheds after Roy's Jewish mobster father's early death. Life throws Roy more than the usual curves, but his intelligence and curiosity shape them into something unforeseen, while Roy's complete lack of self-pity allow the stories to seem to tell themselves.

Taking the controversial approach that deer hunting has become more of a "social event" than an affirmation of the more basic human need to subsist in the wild, Jim Roy proposes a simple, common sense method of stalking the whitetail that he calls "survival hunting." Some of the mysteries and myths concerning the whitetail can best be unraveled by observing the natural movements of the herd-not the more unnatural movements caused by pressure from humans or dogs. Roy breaks the deer herd down into its natural family groups, such as parental does with fawns, lone bucks, and single does of various ages, tracking their movements to and from their bedding areas based on such natural influences as wind direction and angle of sunlight. Based on over twenty years of observation at the Smithsonian Institute's Environmental Research Center on Chesapeake Bay, this revised edition of a classic will be welcomed by hunters and wildlife watchers alike.

Roy Cape is a Trinidadian saxophonist active as a band musician for more than fifty years and as a bandleader for more than thirty. He is known throughout the islands and the Caribbean diasporas in North America and Europe. Part ethnography, part biography, and part Caribbean music history, Roy Cape is about the making of reputation and circulation, and about the meaning of labor and work ethics. An experiment in storytelling, it joins Roy's voice with that of ethnomusicologist Jocelyne Guilbault. The idea for the book emerged from an exchange they had while discussing Roy's journey as a performer and bandleader. In conversation, they began experimenting with voice, with who takes the lead, who says what, when, to whom, and why. Their book reflects that dynamic, combining first-person narrative, dialogue, and the polyphony of Roy's bandmates' voices. Listening to recordings and looking at old photographs elicited more recollections, which allowed Roy to expand on recurring themes and motifs. This congenial, candid book offers different ways of knowing Roy's labor of love—his sound and work through sound, his reputation and circulation as a renowned musician and bandleader in the world.

Alexander Roy offers an account of the Canonball Run of the 1970s, the illegal high-speed, non-stop races from New York to Los Angeles that featured a field of wealthy international participants. This book is the tale of one man's insatiable drive beyond life in the fast lane.

Barry Gifford has been writing gritty, American tales for the past forty years. His novels, stories, poetry, and films have helped shape the American neo-noir genre. The New York Times Book Review says that he "can sum up in a few words the cruelty, horror, and crushing banality that shape an entire life.” Andrei Codrescu calls Gifford “a great comic realist,” while Pedro Almodóvar likens him to the surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel, and Jonathan Lethem describes his style as “William Faulkner by way of B-movie film noir, porn paperbacks, and Sun Records rockabilly.” In The Roy Stories Gifford brings his signature style to a collection of tales following the character of Roy, who has made appearances in a number of Gifford’s previous story collections. Roy lives a mystical kind of life, skinning crocodiles in Southern Florida at age nine in the 1940s and playing in the back alleys of Chicago in the 1950s. This deep-feeling boy observes every detail in his surroundings with a sense of dark humor and an openness that will clutch readers tightly by the heart and lead them on a historical journey.

Maurice Yacowar challenges genre and form in Roy & Me, a cross between memoir and fiction, truth and distortion. It is the exploration of Yacowar's relationship with Roy Farran - soldier, politician, author, mentor - and his conflict with Farran's anti-Semitic past. Best known for his service with the Special Air Service during World War II, Roy Farran served as a politician in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Premier Peter Lougheed. During his time as a soldier, Farran allegedly kidnapped and murdered a sixteen-year-old member of the Lehi group. Roy & Me is a memoir that edges toward fiction by venturing into Farran's thoughts, based on his writings and Yacowar's imagination.

When anthropologist Richard Grinker's daughter was diagnosed with autism in 1994, it occurred in only about 1 in every 10,000 children. Within ten years, rates had skyrocketed, and the media was declaring autism an epidemic. Unstrange Minds documents Grinker's quest across the globe to discover the surprising truth about why autism is so much more common today. Grinker shows that the identification and treatment of autism depends on culture just as much as on science. Filled with moving stories and informed by the latest science, Unstrange Minds is a powerful testament to a father's quest for the truth.