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Personal Geography
Personal Geography A Novel by Geoff Rips The world is falling apart at every turn as New York investigator Giacomo Berg undertakes a desperate search for longtime friend Peter Proust before he disappears from the face of the earth. Set in the chaotic months leading up to the millennium, Peter, last heard from in Texas, seems to be working intently to fade into the landscape. Berg's search leads deep into the underbelly of America, where he encounters a survivalist waiting for the bomb, people dodging space debris, and a commune hidden in the East Texas woods run by a messianic rock star. All are trying to protect themselves in a world gone haywire. Berg is joined by Texas-born friend Bonita ...
The Calculus of Falling Bodies
The poems in this collection span the 40 years in which Geoff Rips has undertaken a deeply personal attempt to understand the mystery of things. The pieces parallel his interest in the greater world and burrow deep inside his own psyche in the attempt to find meaning. His poems include the pantheon of subjects embraced by poets through the ages—life, death, love, and family—and they discuss the natural world and the material world, reality TV shows, looking for work, traffic, the lives of window washers and hot dog vendors, the wetlands, and pelicans, plovers, and dolphins. This is the whole of life, seen by looking closely at its parts.
The Truth
Fiction. Winner of the 2006 AWP Award for the Novel. Nicholas Delbanco, Judge. In his debut novel, THE TRUTH, Geoff Rips creates a moral universe in a series of tales narrated by the palsied hunchback Chuy Pingarron who spends his days on the front porch of a San Antonio whorehouse and is proud to be dubbed "the standard of perversion" by those whose stories he tells. Through his twisted perspective we meet the Midwife who is also the house's madam, the philosopher Don Apolo who lives in an iron lung, and Angelita, famous for her hands. Chuy relates the sad story of the impenetrable Soledad, deemed by her mother to be a saint; of la Ramona, whose one eye looks into your soul while the other looks away; and of the enigmatic la Verdad, whose customers seek her out to learn their fortunes. At turns comic and tragic, Chuy's story meditates on the most ancient questions: how do you live a life and what does it mean?
The Moral Center
A “new liberal with old values” argues nothing is the matter with Kansas—and that the Democratic party needs to lead America out of its moral crisis (The New York Times). In this insightful book, the author of The Cheating Culture addresses the anxieties that many Americans share, pointing out that the problems most people care about are not hot-button partisan issues like abortion and gay marriage, but rather deeper subjects that neither party is addressing—the selfishness that is careening out of control, the effect of our violent and consumerist culture on children, and our lack of a greater purpose. As Republicans veer into zealotry, liberals can find common ground with the moder...
Blessed Are the Organized
How ordinary citizens band together to bring about real change In an America where the rich and fortunate have free rein to do as they please, can the ideal of liberty and justice for all be anything but an empty slogan? Many Americans are doubtful, and have withdrawn into apathy and cynicism. But thousands of others are not ready to give up on democracy just yet. Working outside the notice of the national media, ordinary citizens across the nation are meeting in living rooms, church basements, synagogues, and schools to identify shared concerns, select and cultivate leaders, and take action. Their goal is to hold big government and big business accountable. In this important new book, Jeffr...
Education Myths
In Education Myths, Jay Greene takes on the conventional wisdom and closely examines eighteen myths advanced by the special interest groups dominating public education. In addition to the money myth, the class size myth, and the teacher pay myth, Greene debunks the special education myth (special ed programs burden public schools), the certification myth (certified or more experienced teachers are more effective in the classroom), the graduation myth (nearly all students graduate from high school), the draining myth (choice harms public schools), the segregation myth (private schools are more racially segregated), and several more.
The Purse Bearer
This novel explores the underbelly of the almost always politically incorrect world of politics and campaigning in Texas in the 1980s. Rose Marie "Red" Ryder made a name for herself by becoming the first female state comptroller of Texas and she is now running to become the first woman U.S. senator from the Lone Star State. Ryder's campaign team is a potluck of misfits and miscreants: a has-been evangelist's son who once ran a string of mobile massage parlors, veterans of the civil rights struggles, Austin lesbian activists, old-school political operatives with sterling motives and shady morals, and then there is Wily T. Foxx. Until he joined the campaign, almost entirely by accident, Wily's passion in life had been cock fighting. Now he is literally the candidate's "purse bearer," a combination bodyguard/campaign worker, privy to all of the political intrigue found on the campaign trail. In a state where the dead can rise and walk to the polls, ballot boxes can grow fat in counties with more cattle than people, and the votes of common folk can be disqualified on a whim, this lively and insightful novel captures the absurd and timeless qualities of running for political office.
Cold Anger
Considering the importance which Latinos will have on American culture and politics in the 21st century, very little of a nonscholarly nature has been written about them. Rogers fills the gap somewhat with this journalistic biography of Ernesto Cortes,a grass-roots leader who teaches Latinos how to use the political system. A man who combines religion and secular ideology, Cortes is doing for the Latino communities nationally what Jesse Jackson did in Chicago a decade earlier. The book effectively captures the flavor of the movement in small, rural locales and in major urban centers, conveying Cortes's ideology and energy, as well as the issues close to the Latino heart. A welcome look at minority politics in the 1990s.
Bill Hobby
A comprehensive biography of a legendary lieutenant governor. During his five terms as lieutenant governor of Texas, Bill Hobby became one of the most powerful political figures in the state’s history. He was first elected lieutenant governor of Texas in 1972 and served until 1990. Thanks to his brilliance as a political tactician and his personal integrity, Hobby was able to set the Senate’s agenda and garner respect from legislators on both sides of the aisle. In Bill Hobby: A Life in Journalism and Public Service, Don Carleton and Erin Purdy document Hobby’s significant contributions to Texas as a journalist, politician, and philanthropist. Born into a prominent Texas family with a ...
Better Together
In his acclaimed bestselling book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam described a thirty-year decline in America's social institutions. The book ended with the hope that new forms of social connection might be invented in order to revive our communities. In Better Together, Putnam and longtime civic activist Lewis Feldstein describe some of the diverse locations and most compelling ways in which civic renewal is taking place today. In response to civic crises and local problems, they say, hardworking, committed people are reweaving the social fabric all across America, often in innovative ways that may turn out to be appropriate for the twenty-first ...
