The Making Of The American Essay

Download The Making Of The American Essay full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Making Of The American Essay ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!

The Making of the American Essay

Author : John D'Agata
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1555977340
Total Pages : 821 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (559 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Making of the American Essay by : John D'Agata

Download or read book The Making of the American Essay written by John D'Agata and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 821 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Now, with "The making of the American essay' the editor includes selections ranging from Anne Bradstreet's secular prayers to Washington Irving's satires, Emily Dickinson's love letters to Kenneth Goldsmith's catalog's, Gertrude Stein's portraits to James Baldwin's and Norman Mailer's mediations on boxing. In this volume the editor uncovers new stories in the American essay's past and shows us that some of the most fiercely daring writers in the American literary canon have turned to the essay in order to produce some of our culture's most exhilarating art."-- book jacket.

The Next American Essay

Author : John D'Agata
Publisher : New History of the Essay
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Next American Essay by : John D'Agata

Download or read book The Next American Essay written by John D'Agata and published by New History of the Essay. This book was released on 2003-02 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of nonfiction essays on such topics as culture, myth, history, romance, and sex includes contributions by such authors as Guy Davenport, Annie Dillard, Jamaica Kincaid, and Susan Sontag. In this singular collection, John D'Agata takes a literary tour of lyric essays written by the masters of the craft. Beginning with 1975 and John McPhee's ingenious piece, the Search for Marvin Gardens, D'Agata selects an example of creative nonfiction for each subsequent year. These essays are unrestrained, elusive, explosive, mysterious, a personal lingual playground. They encompass and illuminate culture, myth, history, romance, and sex. Each essay is a world of its own, a world so distinctive it resists definition.

The Contemporary American Essay

Author : Phillip Lopate
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0525567321
Total Pages : 641 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (255 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Contemporary American Essay by : Phillip Lopate

Download or read book The Contemporary American Essay written by Phillip Lopate and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling anthology of essays by some of the best writers of the past quarter century—from Barry Lopez and Margo Jefferson to David Sedaris and Samantha Irby—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate. The first decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a blossoming of creative nonfiction. In this extraordinary collection, Phillip Lopate gathers essays by forty-seven of America’s best contemporary writers, mingling long-established eminences with newer voices and making room for a wide variety of perspectives and styles. The Contemporary American Essay is a monument to a remarkably adaptable form and a treat for anyone who loves fantastic writing. Hilton Als • Nicholson Baker • Thomas Beller • Sven Birkerts • Eula Biss • Mary Cappello • Anne Carson • Terry Castle • Alexander Chee • Teju Cole • Bernard Cooper • Sloane Crosley • Charles D’Ambrosio • Meghan Daum • Brian Doyle • Geoff Dyer • Lina Ferreira • Lynn Freed • Rivka Galchen • Ross Gay • Louise Glück • Emily Fox Gordon • Patricia Hampl • Aleksandar Hemon • Samantha Irby • Leslie Jamison • Margo Jefferson • Laura Kipnis • David Lazar • Yiyun Li • Phillip Lopate • Barry Lopez • Thomas Lynch • John McPhee • Ander Monson • Eileen Myles • Maggie Nelson • Meghan O’Gieblyn • Joyce Carol Oates • Darryl Pinckney • Lia Purpura • Karen Russell • David Sedaris • Shifra Sharlin • David Shields • Floyd Skloot • Rebecca Solnit • Clifford Thompson • Wesley Yang An Anchor Original.

The Glorious American Essay

Author : Phillip Lopate
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0525436278
Total Pages : 929 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (254 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Glorious American Essay by : Phillip Lopate

Download or read book The Glorious American Essay written by Phillip Lopate and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 929 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A monumental, canon-defining anthology of three centuries of American essays, from Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin to David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate "Not only an education but a joy. This is a book for the ages." —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances The essay form is an especially democratic one, and many of the essays Phillip Lopate has gathered here address themselves—sometimes critically—to American values. We see the Puritans, the Founding Fathers and Mothers, and the stars of the American Renaissance struggle to establish a national culture. A grand tradition of nature writing runs from Audubon, Thoreau, and John Muir to Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard. Marginalized groups use the essay to assert or to complicate notions of identity. Lopate has cast his net wide, embracing critical, personal, political, philosophical, literary, polemical, autobiographical, and humorous essays. Americans by birth as well as immigrants appear here, famous essayists alongside writers more celebrated for fiction or poetry. The result is a dazzling overview of the riches of the American essay.

The Golden Age of the American Essay

Author : Phillip Lopate
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0593312813
Total Pages : 546 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (933 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Golden Age of the American Essay by : Phillip Lopate

Download or read book The Golden Age of the American Essay written by Phillip Lopate and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A one-of-a-kind anthology of American essays on a wide range of subjects by a dazzling array of mid-century writers at the top of their form—from Normal Mailer to James Baldwin to Joan Didion—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate The three decades that followed World War II were an exceptionally fertile period for American essays. The explosion of journals and magazines, the rise of public intellectuals, and breakthroughs in the arts inspired a flowering of literary culture. At the same time, the many problems that confronted mid-century America—racism, sexism, nuclear threat, war, poverty, and environmental degradation among them—proved fruitful topics for America's best minds. In The Golden Age of the American Essay, Phillip Lopate assembles a dazzling array of famous writers, critics, sociologists, theologians, historians, activists, theorists, humorists, poets, and novelists. Here are writers like James Agee, E. B. White, A. J. Liebling, Randall Jarrell, and Mary McCarthy, pivoting from the comic indignities of daily life to world peace, consumerism, and restaurants in Paris. Here is Norman Mailer on Jackie Kennedy, Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Here are Gore Vidal, Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, John Updike, Joan Didion, and many more, in a treasury of brilliant writing that has stood the test of time.

The Lost Origins of the Essay

Author : John D'Agata
Publisher : Graywolf Press
ISBN 13 : 9781555975326
Total Pages : 656 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (753 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Lost Origins of the Essay by : John D'Agata

Download or read book The Lost Origins of the Essay written by John D'Agata and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2009-08-04 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expansive and exhilarating world tour of innovative nonfiction writing I think the reason we've never pinpointed the real beginning to this genre is because we've never agreed on what the genre even is. Do we read nonfiction in order to receive information, or do we read it to experience art? It's not very clear sometimes. This, then, is a book that tries to offer a clear objective: I am here in search of art. I am here to track the origins of an alternative to commerce. John D'Agata leaves no tablet unturned in his exploration of the roots of the essay. The Lost Origins of the Essay takes the reader from ancient Mesopotamia to classical Greece and Rome, from fifth-century Japan to nineteenth-century France, to modern Brazil, Germany, Barbados, and beyond. With brief and brilliant introductions to seminal works by Heraclitus, Sei Sho-nagon, Michel de Montaigne, Jonathan Swift, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Octavio Paz, and more than forty other luminaries, D'Agata reexamines the international forebears of today's American nonfiction. This idiosyncratic collection makes a perfect historical companion to D'Agata's The Next American Essay, a touchstone among students and practitioners of the lyric essay.

Tell Me How It Ends

Author : Valeria Luiselli
Publisher : Coffee House Press
ISBN 13 : 1566894964
Total Pages : 72 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (668 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Tell Me How It Ends by : Valeria Luiselli

Download or read book Tell Me How It Ends written by Valeria Luiselli and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2017-03-13 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Part treatise, part memoir, part call to action, Tell Me How It Ends inspires not through a stiff stance of authority, but with the curiosity and humility Luiselli has long since established." —Annalia Luna, Brazos Bookstore "Valeria Luiselli's extended essay on her volunteer work translating for child immigrants confronts with compassion and honesty the problem of the North American refugee crisis. It's a rare thing: a book everyone should read." —Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books "Tell Me How It Ends evokes empathy as it educates. It is a vital contribution to the body of post-Trump work being published in early 2017." —Katharine Solheim, Unabridged Books "While this essay is brilliant for exactly what it depicts, it helps open larger questions, which we're ever more on the precipice of now, of where all of this will go, how all of this might end. Is this a story, or is this beyond a story? Valeria Luiselli is one of those brave and eloquent enough to help us see." —Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company "Appealing to the language of the United States' fraught immigration policy, Luiselli exposes the cracks in this foundation. Herself an immigrant, she highlights the human cost of its brokenness, as well as the hope that it (rather than walls) might be rebuilt." —Brad Johnson, Diesel Bookstore "The bureaucratic labyrinth of immigration, the dangers of searching for a better life, all of this and more is contained in this brief and profound work. Tell Me How It Ends is not just relevant, it's essential." —Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore "Humane yet often horrifying, Tell Me How It Ends offers a compelling, intimate look at a continuing crisis—and its ongoing cost in an age of increasing urgency." —Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

Author : Richard Hofstadter
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307388441
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Paranoid Style in American Politics by : Richard Hofstadter

Download or read book The Paranoid Style in American Politics written by Richard Hofstadter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs.In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as “Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?, ” The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States.

The American Essay in the American Century

Author : Ned Stuckey-French
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
ISBN 13 : 082621925X
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (262 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The American Essay in the American Century by : Ned Stuckey-French

Download or read book The American Essay in the American Century written by Ned Stuckey-French and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern culture, the essay is often considered an old-fashioned, unoriginal form of literary styling. The word essay brings to mind the uninspired five-paragraph theme taught in schools around the country or the antiquated, Edwardian meanderings of English gentlemen rattling on about art and old books. These connotations exist despite the fact that Americans have been reading and enjoying personal essays in popular magazines for decades, engaging with a multitude of ideas through this short-form means of expression. To defend the essay—that misunderstood staple of first-year composition courses—Ned Stuckey-French has written The American Essay in the American Century. This book uncovers the buried history of the American personal essay and reveals how it played a significant role in twentieth-century cultural history. In the early 1900s, writers and critics debated the “death of the essay,” claiming it was too traditional to survive the era’s growing commercialism, labeling it a bastion of British upper-class conventions. Yet in that period, the essay blossomed into a cultural force as a new group of writers composed essays that responded to the concerns of America’s expanding cosmopolitan readership. These essays would spark the “magazine revolution,” giving a fresh voice to the ascendant middle class of the young century. With extensive research and a cultural context, Stuckey-French describes the many reasons essays grew in appeal and importance for Americans. He also explores the rise of E. B. White, considered by many the greatest American essayist of the first half of the twentieth century whose prowess was overshadowed by his success in other fields of writing. White’s work introduced a new voice, creating an American essay that melded seriousness and political resolve with humor and self-deprecation. This book is one of the first to consider and reflect on the contributions of E. B. White to the personal essay tradition and American culture more generally. The American Essay in the American Century is a compelling, highly readable book that illuminates the history of a secretly beloved literary genre. A work that will appeal to fiction readers, scholars, and students alike, this book offers fundamental insight into modern American literary history and the intersections of literature, culture, and class through the personal essay. This thoroughly researched volume dismisses, once and for all, the “death of the essay,” proving that the essay will remain relevant for a very long time to come.

T. S. Eliot

Author : James E. Miller Jr.
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271045477
Total Pages : 494 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis T. S. Eliot by : James E. Miller Jr.

Download or read book T. S. Eliot written by James E. Miller Jr. and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2008-03-17 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late in his life T. S. Eliot, when asked if his poetry belonged in the tradition of American literature, replied: “I’d say that my poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England. That I’m sure of. . . . In its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America.” In T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, James Miller offers the first sustained account of Eliot’s early years, showing that the emotional springs of his poetry did indeed come from America. Miller challenges long-held assumptions about Eliot’s poetry and his life. Eliot himself always maintained that his poems were not based on personal experience, and thus should not be read as personal poems. But Miller convincingly combines a reading of the early work with careful analysis of surviving early correspondence, accounts from Eliot’s friends and acquaintances, and new scholarship that delves into Eliot’s Harvard years. Ultimately, Miller demonstrates that Eliot’s poetry is filled with reflections of his personal experiences: his relationships with family, friends, and wives; his sexuality; his intellectual and social development; his influences. Publication of T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet marks a milestone in Eliot scholarship. At last we have a balanced portrait of the poet and the man, one that takes seriously his American roots. In the process, we gain a fuller appreciation for some of the best-loved poetry of the twentieth century.

The Federalist Papers

Author : Alexander Hamilton
Publisher : Read Books Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1528785878
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (287 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Federalist Papers by : Alexander Hamilton

Download or read book The Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.

About a Mountain

Author : John D'Agata
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393076695
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (93 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis About a Mountain by : John D'Agata

Download or read book About a Mountain written by John D'Agata and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-02-07 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named One of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books Written by the New York Times Magazine, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Editors' Choice. When John D'Agata helps his mother move to Las Vegas one summer, he begins to follow a story about the federal government's plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain; the result is a startling portrait that compels a reexamination of the future of human life.

MFA Vs NYC

Author : Chad Harbach
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0865478139
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (654 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis MFA Vs NYC by : Chad Harbach

Download or read book MFA Vs NYC written by Chad Harbach and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writers write—but what do they do for money? In a widely read essay entitled "MFA vs NYC," bestselling novelist Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding) argued that the American literary scene has split into two cultures: New York publishing versus university MFA programs. This book brings together established writers, MFA professors and students, and New York editors, publicists, and agents to talk about these overlapping worlds, and the ways writers make (or fail to make) a living within them. Should you seek an advanced degree, or will workshops smother your style? Do you need to move to New York, or will the high cost of living undo you? What's worse—having a day job or not having health insurance? How do agents decide what to represent? Will Big Publishing survive? How has the rise of MFA programs affected American fiction? The expert contributors, including George Saunders, Elif Batuman, and Fredric Jameson, consider all these questions and more, with humor and rigor. MFA vs NYC is a must-read for aspiring writers, and for anyone interested in the present and future of American letters.

Why America Needs a Left

Author : Eli Zaretsky
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745656560
Total Pages : 183 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Why America Needs a Left by : Eli Zaretsky

Download or read book Why America Needs a Left written by Eli Zaretsky and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.

The Story of America

Author : Jill Lepore
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691159599
Total Pages : 426 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis The Story of America by : Jill Lepore

Download or read book The Story of America written by Jill Lepore and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories -- from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address -- to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print.

Crafting Presence

Author : Nicole B. Wallack
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1607325357
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis Crafting Presence by : Nicole B. Wallack

Download or read book Crafting Presence written by Nicole B. Wallack and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays are central to students’ and teachers’ development as thinkers in their fields. In Crafting Presence, Nicole B. Wallack develops an approach to teaching writing with the literary essay that holds promise for writing students, as well as for achieving a sense of common purpose currently lacking among professionals in composition, creative writing, and literature. Wallack analyzes examples drawn primarily from volumes of The Best American Essays to illuminate the most important quality of the essay as a literary form: the writer’s “presence.” She demonstrates how accounting for presence provides a flexible and rigorous heuristic for reading the contexts, formal elements, and purposes of essays. Such readings can help students learn writing principles, practices, and skills for crafting myriad presences rather than a single voice. Crafting Presence holds serious implications for writing pedagogy by providing new methods to help teachers and students become more insightful and confident readers and writers of essays. At a time when liberal arts education faces significant challenges, this important contribution to literary studies, composition, and creative writing shows how an essay-centered curriculum empowers students to show up in the world as public thinkers who must shape the “knowledge economy” of the twenty-first century.

When All Else Fails

Author : Rayyan Al-Shawaf
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1623710928
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (237 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Book Synopsis When All Else Fails by : Rayyan Al-Shawaf

Download or read book When All Else Fails written by Rayyan Al-Shawaf and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A darkly humorous saga set in post-9/11 America and the Middle East When All Else Fails begins on September 12th, 2001. It is the story of Hunayn, a luckless and lovelorn Iraqi college student living in Orlando, Florida, after having graduated from high school in Beirut. Hunayn’s life is upended by 9/11—but not immediately, and not in the way that he, fearful in the aftermath of the attacks, initially expects. As America settles into its post-9/11, open-ended “Septemberland” phase (vigilant but also overly suspicious and even paranoid), many Arab and Muslim Americans are made to feel it’s no longer their home. With Hunayn, who muddles through a series of surreal episodes in Orlando and nearby Indiantown, the situation proves almost the opposite: Septemberland—so many of whose citizens think they have Hunayn figured out just because of his name or origins—comes to remind him of his most recent unhappy home, Lebanon, which he assumed he’d left behind. Now, having had his fill of disconcerting experiences, Hunayn returns to Beirut. At least he knows how to navigate life back there—or so he thinks. It turns out that Lebanon is about to undergo political upheaval of its own: a former prime minister opposed to neighboring Syria’s control of the country is assassinated; subsequent popular protests compel the Syrian regime to withdraw its army; a spate of mysterious bombings terrorizes everyone; and Israel, another neighbor, launches a war on Lebanon in retaliation for an attack by a Lebanese militant group. Hunayn finds himself aswirl in the maelstrom. And all the while, he watches from afar as Iraq, his fabled homeland and the owner of his heart, unravels in the wake of the US-led invasion.