ANTI HERO: The Ultimate Fight for Love

A memoir of one man’s journey into, and out of, the movement that foreshadowed the modern-day “Antifa.” Between 1999-2005, as the nation convulsed with uncertainty over a contested election and the Sept. 11 attacks, A.J. Lozier attended and helped organize protests across the United States, as an active participant in the anarchist "black bloc," predecessor to the modern-day "Antifa." He was charged, tackled, swung at, shot at with rubber bullets, punched and, once, arrested. He did his fair of shoving too, all in the name of Anarchy, which he believed to be the only hope for a more peaceful and equitable society, in which capitalism was a thing of the past. This is no "behind the mask" exposé, but nor is it a work of unselfconscious propaganda. It is first and foremost a story, but one that charts how a pure-intentioned desire for peace and justice morphed into a mechanism for justifying any behavior. It is a story that foreshadows the Antifa we see today.

What is the true nature of evil? Why is there evil? Does it serve a purpose? Are there deeds and crimes so heinous that one mustn't even discuss their existence? Malcolm X. "Mark" Moses is the prototypical post-modern anti-hero, born in the late Fifties, raised on Sixties iconoclasm, the end-of-the-century Alienated Man, a rebel to the bitter end, until he is confronted with an evil that is, in his words, "worse than the Holocaust" and realizes that his pamphlets and proclamations, his entire world-view, had left him unequipped to counter it. The ANTI-HERO chronicles Mark Moses's life from his free-thinking childhood to his radical teens and college years to the day he comes face to face with the specter that will change his destiny.

The Anti-Hero in the American Novel rereads major texts of the 1960s to offer an innovative re-evaluation of a set of canonical novels that moves beyond entrenched post-modern and post-structural interpretations towards an appraisal which emphasizes the specifically humanist and idealist elements of these works.

Mary O'Sullivan makes her own rules now. Her first self-assigned mission? Track down the league retirees who killed her family, and enforce the long-overdue justice they deserve. But Mary's crusade thrusts her deep into the shadows of vigilantism, where good and evil blur to gray. With her secret identity blown to shreds, she's beset by reporters and forced to seek unlikely allies. When her enemies turn the tables and start hunting her, Mary must face the darker side of heroism—or risk becoming their next victim. Follow Mary into the dark with the page-turning sequel to Alter Ego.

The Second World War. Poland. Our narrator has no intention of being a hero. He plans to survive this war, whatever it takes. Meticulously he recounts his experiences: the slow unravelling of national events as well as uncomfortable personal encounters on the street, in the café, at the office, in his love affairs. He is intimate but reserved; conversational but careful; reflective but determined. As he becomes increasingly and chillingly alienated from other people, the reader is drawn into complicit acquiescence. We are forced to consider what it means to be heroic and how we ourselves would behave in the same circumstances. Written in 1961, this is the masterpiece of one of the great Polish writers of the twentieth century.

Investigations into the heroic - or not - behaviour of the protagonists of medieval romance. Medieval romances so insistently celebrate the triumphs of heroes and the discomfiture of villains that they discourage recognition of just how morally ambiguous, antisocial or even downright sinister their protagonists can be, and, correspondingly, of just how admirable or impressive their defeated opponents often are. This tension between the heroic and the antiheroic makes a major contribution to the dramatic complexity of medieval romance, but it is not an aspect of the genre that has been frequently discussed up until now. Focusing on fourteen distinct characters and character-types in medieval narrative, this book illustrates the range of different ways in which the imaginative power and appeal of romance-texts often depend on contradictions implicit in the very ideal of heroism. Dr Neil Cartlidge is Lecturer in English at the University of Durham. Contributors: Neil Cartlidge, Penny Eley, David Ashurst, Meg Lamont, Laura Ashe, Judith Weiss, Gareth Griffith, Kate McClune, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Ad Putter, Robert Rouse, Siobhain Bly Calkin, James Wade, Stephanie Vierick Gibbs Kamath

Is heroism possible for everyone? Should it be? What kinds of stories do we tell when we talk about heroes and what do these stories reveal about how we view ourselves? This book takes up these questions and more by reflecting on twenty-first century American television shows. Among the shows examined are Only Murders in the Building, Game of Thrones, The Good Lord Bird, The Boys, and Severance. What we find is an entertainment landscape unsure about what a hero is or even what qualifies as heroic. In a nation uncertain about heroism, we see a dramatic rise in the popularity of the anti-hero and even in worlds without heroes. This fragmented variety highlights how the American political mind is similarly fragmented in what it believes are its highest aspirations—and its deepest anxieties. It is this fragmentation that may help us understand why twenty-first century entertainment has elevated the heroic to the supernatural while simultaneously democratizing heroism to the point where anyone may become one. A Hero in All of Us?: Heroism and American Political Thought as Seen on TV explores this multifaceted landscape to better understand how Americans view their heroes and themselves.

The journey begins in Tijuana Mexico with Nomad Wyman, a man with a violent and turbulent past, in his preparation for a road trip towards Western Canada to get re-acquainted for the first time in 23 years with his first teenage love, Maeve. With over 2 decades of complete absence between them, Nomad's primary concern is how to tell his first love about everything that transpired in between, and will she accept him for who he is and all he's done. It is the closing off of one avenue and the prospect of greener pastures with an old flame. It becomes a time to reflect. He lays his life bare. His extremely violent past, his insecurities, his sexual adventures and misadventures, his guilt, his hopes, the things that draw him, yet disturb him at the same time. We are introduced to a whirlwind of encounters, laced with numerous philosophical musings, which are generally flawless when stood up to scrutiny.

Presents a collection of critical essays about Kafka's The metamorphosis.