Lightning On Saratoga Ave. is the story of Marvin White's a radical new type of electric generator, built in his back yard on Detroit's east side.

Weaving anecdotal narrative with trenchant reflections on his profession, Garret Keizer offers one teacher's answer to the hue and cry over the crisis in education. An English teacher in rural Vermont, he writes of the opposing realities he faces every day: the promise and energy of the young and the oppressive effect of their economic disadvantages; the beauty of the countryside and its people and the harsh, sometimes ugly edge of life there; the need for discipline and the importance of ...

In this powerful, eloquent story of his return to the classroom, a former teacher offers a rousing defense of his beleaguered vocationPerhaps no profession is so constantly discussed, regulated, and maligned by non-practitioners as teaching. The voices of the teachers themselves are conspicuously missing. Defying this trend, teacher and writer Garret Keizer takes us to school—literally—in this arresting account of his return to the same rural Vermont high school whe...

Japan’s employment practices were long considered a cornerstone to its economic success. However, the reversal in economic performance during the 1990s altered the positive perception and inspired major adaptations like the rise in performance-related pay (‘seikashugi’) and non-regular employment. This book presents case-studies of the adaptations in personnel management by major Japanese firms. It highlights the diversity, the stability and the considerations behind the adaptations that a...

When Adam Crag learns that one of the other candidates to fly the USA’s first prospective Moon lander has been murdered, he is thrust into the leadership of a secretive moon launch. Unfortunately for him, the Soviets are a step ahead. From the moment Crag is selected, deadly complications plague the mission, including the possibility that one of the three crew members is a sleeper agent for the other side. Written by an expert on the U.S. space program, First on the Moon is an exciting tal...

This book explores how power operates in workplace settings at local, national and transnational levels. It argues that how people are valued in and out of work is a political dynamic, which reflects and shapes how societies treat their citizens.Offering vital resources for activists and students on labour rights, employment issues and trade unions, this book argues that the influence workers can exert is changing dramatically and future challenges for change can be positive and pr...

Winner of the 2022 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry PrizeFraternal Light: On Painting While Black is a lyric evocation of the life and work of the great African American artist Beauford Delaney. These poems pay homage to Delaney’s resilience and ingenuity in the face of profound adversity. Although his work never garnered the acclaim it deserves—and is finally receiving—Delaney was well known and highly respected in African American cultural circles, among bohemia...

American essayist and Harper's contributing editor Garret Keizer offers a brilliant, literate look at our strip-searched, over-shared, viral-videoed existence.Body scans at the airport, candid pics on Facebook, a Twitter account for your stray thoughts, and a surveillance camera on every street corner -- today we have an audience for all of the extraordinary and banal events of our lives. The threshold between privacy and exposure becomes more permeable by the minu...

Noise is usually defined as unwanted sound: loud music from a neighbor, the honk of a taxicab, the roar of a supersonic jet. But as Garret Keizer illustrates in this probing examination, noise is as much about what we want as about what we seek to avoid. It has been a byproduct of human striving since ancient times even as it has become a significant cause of disease in our own. At heart, noise provides a key for understanding some of our most pressing issues, from social inequality to cli...

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was one of the pre-eminent figures of the Italian Renaissance – he was also one of the most paradoxical. He spent an incredible amount of time writing notebooks, perhaps even more time than he ever held a brush, yet at the same time Leonardo was Renaissance culture’s most fanatical critic of the word. When Leonardo criticized writing he criticized it as an expert on words; when he was painting, writing remained in the back of his mind.In this book, Joos...

The fifteenth-century Italian artist Piero della Francesca painted a familiar world. Roads wind through hilly landscapes, run past farms, sheds, barns, and villages. This is the world in which Piero lived. At the same time, Piero’s paintings depict a world that is distant. The subjects of his pictures are often Christian and that means that their setting is the Holy Land, a place Piero had never visited.The Realism of Piero della Francesca studies this paradoxical aspect of Piero’s...

An updated edition of the highly successful and influential Takes On Films, now with twice as many film reviews written by Dan Keizer. He's reviewing new movies, he's reviewing old movies, he's reviewing action, science fiction, art movies, movies about cats, movies about dogs, movies about stupid kids and even movies where it's mostly people just sitting around and talking.With reviews often accompanied by wild conspiracy theories, pointless personal anecdotes and curmudg...