What Was That All About

Intimate behind-the-scenes recollections of Ronald Reagan by those who knew him during his early political career in California—photos included! People often wonder: “What was Reagan like privately?” “How did he treat his children?” “How did he handle pressure?” “How did he handle danger?” “How did he treat his staff?” “How did he handle difficult, almost impossible to deal with, legislators?” This book collects reminiscences from those who were there, working in a wide variety of positions, recounting how the former actor, governor of California, and future president of the United States used humor to disarm his most ardent critics and tenacious opponents. In this book, you’ll discover observations about the close bond between Ronald and Nancy Reagan; the gentlemanly character of the governor who “never equated disagreement with disloyalty;” the way Reagan thrived on being underestimated; the untold story behind the secret plan hatched by former Air Force Secretary Thomas C. Reed and a handful of dedicated insiders to launch Reagan’s unequivocal, arguably first campaign for President of the United States in 1968; and much more.

If Phua Chu Kang’s yellow boots and permed hair are all you know about Gurmit Singh, then you need this book. The actor, host, singer and entrepreneur shares not just his funny moments in life but also bares his personal moments in What Was I Thinking? and proves that the funnyman image is just one of his many facets. Read about the first car he drove as a child, the neighbour with the EYE, the rat that almost ate his finger when he was a baby, how he dealt with the loss of his parents and many more stories. Caution: This is not a how-to book on being a better entertainer; rather, you will walk away with a better understanding of this man.

New materialisms argue for a more science-friendly humanities, ventilating questions about methodology and subject matter and the importance of the non-human. However, these new sites of attention - climate, biology, affect, geology, animals and objects - tend to leverage their difference against language and the discursive. Similarly, questions about ontology have come to eclipse, and even eschew, those of epistemology. While this collection of essays is in kinship with this radical shake-up of how and what we study, the aim is to re-navigate what constitutes materiality. These efforts are encapsulated by a rewriting of the Derridean axiom, 'there is no outside text' as 'there is no outside nature.' What if nature has always been literate, numerate, social? And what happens to 'the human' if its exceptional identity and status is conceded quantum, non-local and ecological implication?

United Methodist pastor Elise Erikson Barrett draws on her own painful experiences, as well as on interviews with others who have gone through the devastation of miscarriage, in an effort to help women grieve and, in time, to think theologically about pregnancy loss. Barrett also offers some much-needed practical advice about breaking the news to others, coping with insensitive comments, and grieving what is often a private loss, unmarked by the world.

What Was I Thinking? Toxic Shock Syndrome By: Dr. Patrick M Schlievert Dr. Patrick M Schlievert was in his first year as an assistant professor of Microbiology and Immunology, having spent two years trying to get the medical and scientific communities to recognize that there was a disease called toxic shock syndrome. Because he could not get even the Federal Government to recognize this disease, he started a national news media blitz that became second only to the Iran hostage crisis in 1980. Dr. Schlievert took this chance at great risk to his career because he grew up poor and had to take risks even to stay alive, and because his allegiance was to the American public and not to the biomedical science community. In this book, Dr. Patrick M Schlievert describes the events in chronological order, including science, a lot of pseudoscience and opinion, and a lot of the incredible politics behind toxic shock syndrome. He also describes the many forms of toxic shock syndrome in order of appearance, including the tampon associated disease and why it happened, non-menstrual toxic shock syndrome, and the flesh-eating streptococcal disease. The book is designed to tell Americans that many parts of their federal healthcare system are broken, including various aspects of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health. It is Dr. Schlievert’s ultimate hope that Americans will read this book because it is written for them. It will help them take partial responsibility for their own health, and hopefully, they can help reorient the United States healthcare system to do its job, namely help them. The National Institutes of Health claims that Dr. Schlievert and his colleagues’ interest in new diseases and their causes is not sufficient grounds to have funding, to which he would ask everyone: If this is not the number one goal of the National Institutes of Health, what should be? And furthermore, why should this federal bureaucracy exist if that is not the goal? Dr. Patrick M Schlievert entered the toxic shock syndrome field at its beginning, and he remains here near its end. He wishes he could say the diseases are at an end, but they are not.

“My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is every-thing.” So wrote Joseph Conrad in the best-known account of literary impressionism, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century movement featuring narratives that paint pictures in readers’ minds. If literary impressionism is anything, it is the project to turn prose into vision. But vision of what? Michael Fried demonstrates that the impressionists sought to compel readers not only to see what was described and narrated but also to see writing itself. Fried reads Conrad, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, W. H. Hudson, Ford Madox Ford, H. G. Wells, Jack London, Rudyard Kipling, Erskine Childers, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, and Edgar Rice Burroughs as avatars of the scene of writing. The upward-facing page, pen and ink, the look of written script, and the act of inscription are central to their work. These authors confront us with the sheer materiality of writing, albeit disguised and displaced so as to allow their narratives to proceed to their ostensible ends. What Was Literary Impressionism? radically reframes a large body of important writing. One of the major art historians and art critics of his generation, Fried turns to the novel and produces a rare work of insight and erudition that transforms our understanding of some of the most challenging fiction in the English language.