American English Language

Gary Pak has emerged as one of the most important Asian Hawaiian writers of our time. In this new collection, Pak expertly crafts a memorable cast of Hawai'i's Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Native Hawaiians, amplifying our cross-cultural understanding of Hawaiian life today.

Under the Skin investigates the role of cross-cultural body modification in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century North America, revealing that the practices of tattooing and scalping were crucial to interactions between Natives and newcomers. These permanent and painful marks could act as signs of alliance or signs of conflict, producing a complex bodily archive of cross-cultural entanglement. Indigenous body modification practices were adopted and transformed by colonial powers, making tattooing and scalping key forms of cultural and political contestation in early America.

Diane Johnson returns with another expatriate comedy of manners in this tale of a young dot-com executive from California who sets off for Europe to find culture, her roots, and maybe a cause to devote her considerable fortune to. When Amy checks into one of the finest small hotels in the French...

Li Jing, a high-flying financier, has just joined his father for dinner at the grand Swan Hotel in central Shanghai when, without warning, the ground begins to rumble, shifts, then explodes in a roar of hot, unfurling air. As Li Jing drags his unconscious father out of the collapsing building, a single shard of glass whistles through the air and neatly pierces his forehead. In an instant, Li Jing's ability to speak Chinese is obliterated....

Would you like to be able to discover the most commonly used American idioms and phrases that will make communication a breeze? Something you can’t learn from a textbook, you have to listen and hear the phrasing used in context in order to get the full and complete picture of how to appropriately use the words, sayings, and phrases. This audiobook acts as an extremely useful addition to your shelf of other English-learning books. Fit right in with the natives and never find yourself confused when someone says a common or uncommon phrase.

A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE GUARDIAN’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY BOOKS OF 2017 A surreal debut novel set in a world shaped by language in the tradition of Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin. Vanja, an information assistant, is sent from her home city of Essre to the austere...

Established early in the last century as a memorial to O. Henry, this annual collection has consistently offered a remarkable sampling of contemporary short stories. Each year stories are chosen from large and small literary magazines and a panel of distinguished writers is enlisted to award the...

Are you setting out on the ambitious journey of integrating into a new culture, seeking to optimize your opportunities for success in pursuit of the American Dream, searching for the ultimate guide to thrive in your new environment, or looking for material for community building? Your quest concludes here! Introducing the Ultimate Essential Guide for New Tagalog Speaking Immigrants to the U.S.—your compass to confidently navigating American life's complexities. Welcome to your new beginning—where opportunity meets preparation!

From the National Book Award–winning author of Lighthead, Terrance Hayes, a fascinating collection of graphic reviews and illustrated prose addressing the last century of American poetry—to be published simultaneously with his latest poetry collection, So to Speak Canonized, overlooked, and...

Alicia Erian's characters are brave, disarming, affectionate, and deeply flawed. They inhabit the not-so-very-wide space between a good intention and a bad outcome. The Brutal Language of Love challenges traditional notions of right and wrong with what has become Erian's signature—an achingly stylish humor and a deep understanding of the brutal truth about human nature. These surprising, provocative, and deeply resonant stories marked the emergence of a major talent.

Splendiferous Speech explores the main sources of the American vernacular - the expanding western frontier, the bumptious world of politics, and the sensation-filled pages of popular 19th-century newspapers. It's a process that started with the earliest English colonists (first word adoption - the Algonquian raccoon) and is still going strong today. Author Rosemarie Ostler takes listeners along on the journey as Americans learn to declare linguistic independence and embrace their own brand of speech.

In this part-memoir, part-manifesto, an acclaimed poet interprets Black radical literary traditions to reimagine freedom through refusal. “An incisive and rigorous assessment of how people arrive within a moment and what they can make out of it—or how they can take it apart.”—Hanif...

「ポルノ」という言葉はすっかり定着して日本語となり、性的な表現物を指すうえで最適な言葉として使用されるようになりました。もともとはpornographyという英語が、ポルノグラフィーと発音されて使われていたものが、省略されて「ポルノ」となったのです。この言葉はラテン語の「娼婦についての描写」が語源で、それが19世紀ころから「わいせつな表現物」という意味で使われるようになりました。そのなかでも、特に「性的な刺激と興奮を追求するもので、人間のセックス・ファンタジー、性的な幻想」を意味したのです。本書では、そのポルノを用いて英語に親しもうと提案しています。英語の読解力を身につけるためにポルノが最適なのは、ポルノの目的なり効能が明白なので、読む側もそれに合わせて対処すればいいからです。ポルノの読みどころは、そのホット・パートにあります。そういったパートを見つけるのはそれほど難しいことではありません。短い会話が増え、’Ahh~’とか’Ohh~’といった感嘆詞が出てくれば、そこがまさにホット・パートです。本商品では、英文ポルノを読む聴く手助けとなる方法をいろいろ解説しています。英語は難しいと決めてかからないで下さい。英語を読む楽しさ聴く楽しさを感じ、本商品を聴き終わったあと、今度は原書を読んでみたいと思っていただけたら、それにまさる喜びはありません。 ※...

The first major book for writers to more effectively engage with complex socio-political issues—a critical first step in creating social change Writers are witnesses and scribes to society’s conscience but writing about social issues in the twenty-first century requires a new, sharper...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in his own words: the definitive collection of his opinions, speeches, and articles on the most essential and vexing legal questions, with an intimate foreword by Justice Elena Kagan “[Scalia’s writings] are as readable today as they were when they first...

These empowering essays from leading women writers examine the power of the gendered language that is used to diminish women -- and imagine a more liberated world. Words matter. They wound, they inflate, they define, they demean. They have nuance and power. "Effortless," "Sassy," "Ambitious,"...

An enchanting collection of stories from the heartland of India Ruskin Bond’s simple characters, living amidst the lush forests of the Himalayan foothills, are remarkable for their quiet heroism, courage and grace, and age-old values of honesty and fidelity. Residents of nondescript villages...

In The Search for the Codex Cardona, Arnold J. Bauer tells the story of his experiences on the trail of a cultural treasure, a Mexican “painted book” that first came into public view at Sotheby’s auction house in London in 1982, nearly 400 years after it was presumably made by Mexican artists and scribes. On folios of amate paper, the Codex includes two oversized maps and 300 painted illustrations accompanied by text in 16-century paleography.

Welcome to the world of Ann Coulter. With her monumental bestsellers Treason, Slander, and High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Coulter has become the most recognized and talked-about conservative intellectual in years—and certainly the most controversial. Now, in How to Talk to a Liberal (If You...

A fearless, revelatory collection from one of the most talked-about poets in America, whose poems have been embraced by critics and readers alike as candid, intimate, and magnetically charged (“like catching a glimpse of the full moon in the middle of the day” —Bomb) “Ecstasy is a...