The Dogmen

Jason Stone is a retired government agent who worked for the Secret Service and DEA for many years, much of his time undercover. As a hobby in retirement he infiltrates and breaks up dogfighting rings. Stone adores dogs and abhors dogfighting. He is in his early sixties, a master of martial arts, highly educated (Princeton PhD in literature). He loves music and cooking and takes great solace from the land. He is haunted by memories of his childhood, of Viet Nam, and of experience as an undercover agent. Stone strikes a deal with the Highway Patrol in a Midwestern state to penetrate and dismantle dogfighting operations. In the process he discovers a larger conspiracy that involves drug trafficking and sets out to take it all down. The action builds to a climax in which Stone is forced to confront a bloody and gruesome death.

A darkly funny, surreal novel set in Chile and Peru, Albina and the Dog-Men is Alejandro Jodorowsky's sprawling modern myth in which sexual desire is a dangerous and generative force that mutates and transforms, rending the social and moral fabric of a small town. When a beautiful amnesiac albino giantess, Albina, and her protector, a tough woman called Crabby, arrive in a desert town, Albina's allure turns men into wild animals. Chased at the same time by a clubfoot criminal, Albina and Crabby must fend off their aggressors before the town consumes itself.

"His people and dogs—those wonderful dogs!—come alive with honest, thrumming energy." —The New York Times Book Review Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. In each of these "weird and wonderful stories" (Boston Globe), Brad Watson writes about people and dogs: dogs as companions, as accomplices, and as unwitting victims of human passions; and people responding to dogs as missing parts of themselves. "Elegant and elegiac, beautifully pitched to the human ear, yet resoundingly felt in our animal hearts" (New York Newsday), Watson's vibrant prose captures the animal crannies of the human personality—yearning for freedom, mourning the loss of something wild, drawn to human connection but also to thoughtless abandon and savagery without judgment. Pinckney Benedict praises Watson's writing as "crisp as a morning in deer season, rife with spirited good humor and high intelligence," and Fred Chappell calls his stories "strong and true to the place they come from." This powerful debut collection marks Brad Watson's introduction into "a distinguished [Southern] literary heritage, from Faulkner to Larry Brown to Barry Hannah to Richard Ford" (The State, Columbia, South Carolina).

In the 1970s sitcom The Odd Couple, Felix and Oscar argue over a racing greyhound that Oscar won in a bet. Animal lover Felix wants to keep the dog as a pet; gambling enthusiast Oscar wants to race it. This dilemma fairly reflects America's attitude toward greyhound racing. This book, the first cultural history of greyhound racing in America, charts the sport's meteoric rise-and equally meteoric decline-against the backdrop of changes in American culture during the last century. Gwyneth Anne Thayer takes us from its origins in "coursing" in England, through its postwar heyday, and up to its current state of near-extinction. Her entertaining account offers fresh insight into the development of American sport and leisure, the rise of animal advocacy, and the unique place that dogs hold in American life. Thayer describes greyhound racing's dynamic growth in the 1920s in places like Saint Louis, Chicago, and New Orleans, then explores its phenomenal popularity in Florida, where promoters exploited its remote association with the upper class and helped foster a celebrity culture around it. By the end of the century media reports of alleged animal cruelty had surfaced as well as competition from other gaming pursuits such as state lotteries and Indian casinos. Greyhound racing became so suspect that even Homer Simpson derided it. In exploring the socioeconomic, political, and ideological factors that fueled the rise and fall of dog racing in America, Thayer has consulted participants and critics alike in order to present both sides of a contentious debate. She examines not only the impact of animal protectionists, but also suspected underworld ties, longstanding tensions between dogmen and track owners over racing contracts, and the evolving relationship between consumerism and dogs. She captures the sport's glory days in dozens of photographs that recall its coursing past or show celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Babe Ruth with winning racing hounds. Thayer also records the growth of the adoption movement that rescues ex-racers from possible euthanasia. Today there are fewer than half as many greyhound tracks, in half as many states, as there were 10 years ago-and half of them are in Florida. Thayer's in-depth, meticulously balanced account is an intriguing look at this singular activity and will teach readers as much about American cultural behavior as about racing greyhounds.

Conditions create character. The unique conditions of the frontier breed a special kind of man, brave, strong, and capable. Thrown out onto the high plains to sink or swim, the Cheyenne bred the dog soldier, and became a strong and vibrant people. Plunging into the American wilderness to find the free life, the pioneer bred the ranger, a man who could build the cabin, hunt and bring home meat, and be ready on a moment’s notice to answer the call for help, to defend the family, kith and kin, with all his ability, even his life, to keep the people free and alive. The Dog Soldier's Manual is the story of this special kind of man, and describes in modern, common sense terms, the business of discipline that can make such a man today, one ready to handle the challenges of modern society and the new millennium. If you want to know how to be a man, The Dog Soldier’s Manual is a good place to start. The heart of the Manual identifies and explains the virtues and goals of dog soldier discipline, from the objects of personal grooming, including physical, mental, and emotional conditioning, expressiveness, and personal presence, to worldly affairs and animal matters, including hair, hygiene, habitat maintenance, possessions, cultural competence, feeding, and personal legend. The people never have too many dog soldiers.

Thoroughly revised and updated for 2005! Includes a new chapter on the best special edition DVDs and a new chapter on finding hidden easter egg features.

George Amos Dorsey was an U.S. ethnographer of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a special focus on Caddoan and Siouan tribes. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Denison University in 1888, then a second Bachelor's Degree in anthropology in 1890 at Harvard university, and finally PhD in 1894, the first PhD in anthropology from Harvard, and the second ever awarded in the United States. The following account of the Cheyenne social organisation was obtained as part of Dorsey's studies of the Cheyenne Sun-Dance, which, in turn, are part of a comparative study on this ceremony among the Plains Tribes he began in 1901. The Cheyenne Sun-Dance forms the subject of Part II. The accounts of the societies, the myths of the origin of the same, and the story of the medicine-arrows are given, with but slight changes, as they were obtained through Richard Davis, a full blood Cheyenne.

An essential new history of Central Europe, the contested lands so often at the heart of world history Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central European powers warred with their neighbors, the region developed its own cohesive identity and produced tremendous accomplishments in politics, society, and culture. Central Europeans launched the Reformation and Romanticism, developed the philosophy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and advanced some of the twentieth century’s most important artistic movements. Drawing on a lifetime of research and scholarship, The Middle Kingdoms tells as never before the captivating story of two thousand years of Central Europe’s history and its enduring significance in world affairs.