In this superb collection of essays edited by Luc Sante, author of Lowlife, and Melissa Holbrook Pierson, writers as diverse as John Updike, Patti Smith, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic pay to homage the famous and the lesser known actors (some megastars, some lesser lights) who illuminate our Hollywood dreams. From a side-splitting tribute to Elmer Fudd to an earnest lament at the absence of great fat actors today, O.K. You Mugs is a dazzling anthology that focuses on those remarkable talents who gave some of the most memorable performances in the history of...
In this superb collection of essays edited by Luc Sante, author of Lowlife, and Melissa Holbrook Pierson, writers as diverse as John Updike, Pa...
In a book that is "a must for anyone who has loved a motorcycle" (Oliver Sacks), Melissa Pierson captures in vivid, writerly prose the mysterious attractions of motorcycling. She sifts through myth and hyperbole: misrepresentations about danger, about the type of people who ride and why they do so. The Perfect Vehicle is not a mere recitation of facts, nor is it a polemic or apologia. Its vivid historical accounts-the beginnings of the machine, the often hidden tradition of women who ride, the tale of the defiant ones who taunt death on the racetrack-are intertwined with Pierson's own story,...
In a book that is "a must for anyone who has loved a motorcycle" (Oliver Sacks), Melissa Pierson captures in vivid, writerly prose the mysterious attr...
In a phenomenon too prevalent to be mere chance, little girls all over the Western world wake one day to find themselves completely taken over by the love of all things equine. Melissa Holbrook Pierson was one of those horse-crazy girls who later returned to riding with a new appreciation for the nature of horses. Melding memoir, sociology, history, anecdote, and a bit of prose poetry, Dark Horses and Black Beauties delves beneath the shallow hypotheses explaining women's connection to horses to look at how this communication with another animal opens us up to a new apprehension of the...
In a phenomenon too prevalent to be mere chance, little girls all over the Western world wake one day to find themselves completely taken over by t...
Years back, Melissa Holbrook Pierson brought home a border collie named Mercy, without a clue of how to get her to behave. Stunned after hiring a trainer whose immediate rapport with Mercy seemed magical, Pierson began delving into the techniques of positive reinforcement. She made her way to B. F. Skinner, the behavioral psychologist who started it all, the man who could train a pigeon to dance in minutes and whose research on how behavior is acquired has ramifications for military dolphin trainers, athletes, dancers, and, as he originally conceived, society at large.
To learn more,...
Years back, Melissa Holbrook Pierson brought home a border collie named Mercy, without a clue of how to get her to behave. Stunned after hiring a t...