Here's a ferociously funny glimpse into the history of literary, theater, art, and general entertainment criticism. Excerpts of reviews are taken from magazines, newspapers, and, in at least one case, from the lips of a powerful European emperor. A complimentary review of most books, music recordings, or plays will often inspire audiences to accept them, but the review is usually forgotten while the work of art goes on to become famous. Readers won't find such reviews in this book, because the emphasis here is on fun. For sheer glee there is nothing like seeing a really venomous critic sharpen his or her claws on somebody's masterpiece. Sometimes the critics are right, but just as often they take journalistic pratfalls. Like many other Hapsburg Emperors who ruled the vast AustroHungarian Empire from its Vienna capital, Joseph II was a generous patron of the arts. But when he dismissed a Mozart symphony as "having too many notes," the rest of the music world could only smile. Henry James and Mark Twain were contemporary novelists, but neither writer understood or appreciated the other's genius. Twain once said of James: "Once you put down one of his books, you simply can't pick it up again." More scathing was the famous New Yorker magazine critic Dorothy Parker, who said of one now-forgotten book: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." Readers will chuckle as they read damning reviews of books, music, plays, television shows, movies, and even restaurants. It's pure entertainment, with just a drop or two of poison.

Haiti's Bad Press is an important book that focuses on the long history of bias against Haiti and Haitians by foreign observers. Robert Lawless, an anthropologist, analyzes Haitian culture and politics from its eighteenth century origins to the present day, challenging 'official' opinion.

When we share or receive good or bad news, from ordinary events such as the birth of a child to public catastrophes such as 9/11, our "old" lives come to an end, and suddenly we enter a new world. In Bad News, Good News, Douglas W. Maynard explores how we tell and hear such news, and what's similar and different about our social experiences when the tidings are bad rather than good or vice versa. Uncovering vocal and nonvocal patterns in everyday conversations, clinics, and other organizations, Maynard shows practices by which people give and receive good or bad news, how they come to realize the news and their new world, how they suppress or express their emotions, and how they construct social relationships through the sharing of news. He also reveals the implications of his study for understanding public affairs in which transmitting news may influence society at large, and he provides recommendations for professionals and others on how to deliver bad or good tidings more effectively. For anyone who wants to understand the interactional facets of news delivery and receipt and their social implications, Bad News, Good News offers a wealth of scholarly insights and practical advice.

For many health care professionals and social service providers, the hardest part of the job is breaking bad news. The news may be about a condition that is life-threatening (such as cancer or AIDS), disabling (such as multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis), or embarrassing (such as genital herpes). To date medical education has done little to train practitioners in coping with such situations. With this guide Robert Buckman and Yvonne Kason provide help. Using plain, intelligible language they outline the basic principles of breaking bad new and present a technique, or protocol, that can be easily learned. It draws on listening and interviewing skills that consider such factors as how much the patient knows and/or wants to know; how to identify the patient's agenda and understanding, and how to respond to his or her feelings about the information. They also discuss reactions of family and friends and of other members of the health care team. Based on Buckman's award-winning training videos and Kason's courses on interviewing skills for medical students, this volume is an indispensable aid for doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, social workers, and all those in related fields.

"There are three twenty-four-hour financial networks. All their slogans are like, Ẁe know what's going on on Wall Street.' But then you turn it on during the crisis, and they're like, Ẁe don't know what's going on.' It'd be like turning on the Weather Channel in a hurricane and they're just doing this: [shuddering] Ẁhy am I wet?! What's happening to me? And it's so windy!'"--Jon Stewart.

Essays that forge a path to a truly radical “bad” modernism in art and literature. What, exactly, constitutes the “bad”? Can one consciously produce in the name of “badness,” or is badness a value judgment that comes after the fact, from an Other? How does one begin to assign aesthetic value to an object? If one is to accept the “bad” as “good,” or to find aesthetic value in badness, then when does the bad succeed and when does it fail? If, pace Beckett, we are to embrace failure as an inevitable goal, then isn't it necessary to invent a new mode of criticism that accommodates this aesthetic reality? Travis Jeppesen's Bad Writing offers a series of interconnected essays, many of which appear in print for the first time, forging a pathway for a truly radical “bad” modernism in art and literature. He explores the terrain of failure, assessing the situation of the twenty-first century literary avant-garde; considers the work of perennial outsiders; and offers “ficto-criticisms,” including his controversial, no-holds-barred takedown of the 2015 Venice Biennale, originally published in Art in America. Erudite, irreverent, witty, and occasionally controversial, Bad Writing reinvigorates the too-often staid medium of art criticism as an iconoclastic and inventive literary art form.

"Bad News targets not only the machinations of the competing campaigns but the innate weaknesses and limitations of the press corps, with special attention to the 2000 election. "Too often journalists, myself included," Mr. Shogan writes, "have been unwilling to learn what they do not know, and to make the information they possess relevant and important to their audiences. Too many of us, eager for attention, have been too willing to create stories that are larger than life and reality, and too impressed with our own importance to benefit from the criticism leveled against our work.""--Jacket.