Verzameling Van Engelsche Fabelen Anecdoten En Bon Mots

This book is about memory—about how the past persists into the present, and about how this persistence has been understood over the past two centuries. Since the French Revolution, memory has been the source of an intense disquiet. Fundamental cultural theories have sought to understand it, and have striven to represent its stresses.

Almost the only indisputable fact about Colonel Tom Parker is that he was the manager of the greatest performer in popular music: Elvis Presley. His real name wasn’t Tom Parker †“ indeed, he wasn’t an American at all, but a Dutch immigrant called Andreas van Kujik. And he certainly wasn’t a proper military colonel: he purchased his title from a man in Louisiana. But while the Colonel has long been acknowledged as something of a charlatan, this book is the first to reveal the extraordinary extent of the secrets he concealed, and the consequences for the career, and ultimately the life, of the star he managed. As Alanna Nash’ prodigious research has discovered, the Colonel left Holland most probably because, at the age of twenty, he bludgeoned a woman to death. Entering the US illegally, he then enlisted in the army as ‘Tom Parker’. But, with supreme irony for someone later styling himself as Colonel, Parker’s military career ended in desertion, and discharge after a psychiatrist had certified him as a psychopath. He then became a fairground barker, working sideshows with a zeal for small-scale huckstering and the casual scam that never left him. And by the height of Elvis’s success, Parker had become a pathological gambler who, at the same time as he was taking, amazingly, a full 50% of Presley’s earnings, frittered away all his wealth in the casinos of Las Vegas. As Nash shows, therefore, the often baffling trajectory of Elvis Presley’s career makes perfect sense once the secret imperatives of the Colonel’s life are known. Parker never booked Presley for a tour of Europe because of the dark secret that ensured he himself could never return there. Even at his most famous, Elvis was still being booked to play out-of-the-way towns in North Carolina †“ because the former fairground barker (who shamelessly negotiated as such even with top record company and film executives) knew them from his days on the circus circuit. And Elvis was trapped playing years of arduous seasons in Las Vegas †“ two shows nightly, seven days a week, until boredom and despair brought on the excessive drug use that killed him †“ because for Parker he was “an open chit†? whose huge earnings prevented his manager’s losses at the gambling tables being called in. Alanna Nash knew Parker towards the end of his life, and has now uncovered the whole story, improbable, shocking, and never less than compelling, of how this larger-than-life man made, and then unmade, popular music’s first and greatest superstar.

"The selection criteria were numerous. Each individual had to have made seminal contributions to organic chemistry over a multidecade career. (The average age of the authors is over 70!) Profiles would represent scientists born and professionally productive in different countries. (Chemistry in 13 countries is detailed.) Taken together, these individuals were to have conducted research in nearly all sub-specialties of organic chemistry. Invitations to contribute were based on solicited advice and on recommendations of chemists from five continents, including nearly all of the contributors. The final assemblage was selected entirely and exclusively by me. Not all who were invited chose to participate, and not all who should have been invited could be asked." "A very detailed four-page document was sent to the contributors, in which they were informed that the objectives of the series were" "1. to delineate the overall scientific development of organic chemistry during the past 30--40 years, a period during which this field has dramatically changed and matured;" "2. to describe the development of specific areas of organic chemistry; to highlight the crucial discoveries and to examine the impact they have had on the continuing development in the field;" "3. to focus attention on the research of some of the seminal contributors to organic chemistry; to indicate how their research programs progressed over a 20--40-year period; and" "4. to provide a documented source for individuals interested in the hows and whys of the development of modern organic chemistry.".

You travel with Jon, who lives in 1976. When his mind is in the sleep-state, the forces of the future world reach out to him and show him how things can be. Go with him on his perilous adventure--a mind-expanding exodus from the imperfect today into a better tomorrow. Discover the beauty and the emotional demands such a journey can bring. Explore the system of thought and action that can be achieved in the Macro world. This is a novel you can't put down--a philosophy you can begin living with now.