Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey there bloggers and blog readers. We here at For Beginners would like to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. All the best to you and your families on this day of thanks. Now go on, eat 'til you can't walk and then read a good book by the fire (or watch the Jets/Bengals game).

A For Beginners Story

I have a bookshelf in my house, on which I keep a tidy row of my relatively small collection of For Beginners books. It's right next to my slightly larger collection of Batman comic arcs and Star Wars bobble heads. Despite the fact that this small number of books is buried somewhere in the middle of my medium-sized bookshelf, filled with the surprisingly large number of books I have amassed over the course of my literary scholarship (I've still got two years to go, I think I'll need a bigger book shelf), every time I entertain guests, some one always manages to locate that small pocket of For Beginners goodness and says to me, "You read For Beginners too?"

I always get such gratification telling these people, "I don't just read the books, I work for For Beginners!" For a brief moment, I am above these people, all far more intelligent than me, who have read Foucault in their upper-level psych classes, Plato and Kierkegaard in advanced philosophy courses, and Chomsky and Ayn Rand just for the fun of it. But just last night, something unprecedented happened. Someone actually stole one of my For Beginners books!

Waking up this morning, I realized that my For Beginners were not as tidy as I usually keep them. All of the books were leaning toward a gap in my collection, right where I would normally find my copy of Global Warming!

I was shocked! Appalled! But, ultimately, honored. I am able to work for a company that puts out books people love so much, they would actually steal one from another person's home.

Do you have any For Beginners stories? I'd love to hear them. Leave me a comment.

Quantum Physics: Life Forever?

Have you ever stared at a clock, feeling as if time had stopped moving? Research in quantum physics suggests you may not be off the mark. What if time were created by life, instead of the other way around? If life creates time, isn’t life immortal? Dr. Robert Lanza, M.D. brings his unusual perspective as a scientist and a doctor to bear in his new book, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. He teams up with astronomer Bob Berman to create a work treating new and old topics in quantum physics, including experiments that suggest even the past may not be fixed at all. Want to jump into the developments of this exciting new field, but not familiar with quantum physics? Get an edge with Relativity and Quantum Physics For Beginners, which explains modern theories like relativity without complex jargon. Our accessible reference gets you up to speed, so you too can follow the latest breakthroughs in this revolutionary science!

Poet Spotlight: Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was born on November 15, 1887 in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of a Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. The daughter of an absent, inventor father, John Milton Moore, and his wife, Mary Warner, Moore grew up in her grandfather's home until she left for an education at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

With the publication of her first work in 1915, Moore garnered attention from poets such as Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, H.D., T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. Her poetry falls under the modernist category, along with works by W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, and Ezra Pound, and is known for its irony and wit. Moore's poetry earned her many prestigious awards, such as the Helen Haire Levinson Prize for Poetry, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize.

Moore spent her life encouraging younger poets to pursue their dreams. She worked with many poets during their younger years, including Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, and James Merrill. Through her poetry, she became something of a superstar; making appearances in exclusive New York City social circles, boxing matches, baseball games, and other social events. She was a particular fan of Muhammad Ali and wrote the liner notes for his spoken word album, I Am The Greatest.

Moore died on February 5, 1972, at the age of 84, after a series of strokes.

Without further ado, here is Moore's poem, "To a Steam Roller," and be sure to check out Poetry For Beginners for more great lessons and examples of poetry through the ages.

The illustration
is nothing to you without the application.
You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down
into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them.

Sparkling chips of rock
are crushed down to the level of the parent block.
Were not 'impersonal judgment in aesthetic
matters, a metaphysical impossibility,' you

might fairly achieve
it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
of one's attending upon you, but to question
the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

Today in History: 1980 -- Voyager I takes the first pictures of Saturn's rings

On November 12, 1980, Voyager I, a NASA space probe launched on September 5, 1977, made its closest approach to Saturn and captured the first up-close images of Saturn's rings. Voyager I was launched with the purpose of visiting Jupiter and Saturn and giving us a better look at the largest planets in our solar system (and their moons). Saturn's rings are not visible from Earth with the naked eye and were first seen through a telescope by Galileo Galilei, in 1610, almost 370 years before the Voyager I.

To this day, Voyager 1 continues to send information back to Earth and, 30 years after its closest approach to Saturn, the space probe is located a mere 10.712 billion miles, only .2% of a single lightyear, from the sun.

For more information on Saturn's majestic, particle-based rings, pick up a copy of Astronomy For Beginners.

A collage of images of Saturn and its satellites taken by Voyage I on November 12, 1980

The Walking Dead on AMC = AWESOME

Hey For Beginners fans. I'm going to go ahead here and take a wild guess that at least some of you like comic books (is that too presumptive?). Here's something incredibly exciting: Robert Kirkman's Eisner-award-winning monthly comic, The Walking Dead, has been adapted into an hour-long television program on the AMC network! With two episodes now on the air, I can pretty confidently declare that this show is, like its comic book counterpart, incredible. In terms of gore, the show is pushing the boundaries of what can be shown on basic cable: the zombies are grotesque, and when the producers want to get bloody, they show no bounds. But this is more than just a tale of zombie apocalypse. The undead take a back seat to social storylines, what Kirkman has been calling for years "Survival Drama." What will these people do to survive, and perhaps more importantly, what will they do to retain their humanity? Could this be the next LOST? Honestly, I believe it could be. Scarier than the first time Kate and Charlie ran through the jungle from the smoke monster, creepier than the first time Jack saw his father on the beach (again, I'm making assumptions that y'all are as nerdy as I am), and also jam-packed with compelling back story and character development.
When you're done watching The Walking Dead (Sunday nights at 10 on AMC), go read your favorite For Beginners titles: Democracy and Anarchism (what is the role of government and leadership?), Heidegger (what does it mean to BE? Is survival the only requirement for existence?), Kierkegaard, Existentialism, and Philosophy (Why do we make the choices that we do?), and take a look at Foucault (The illustration on the cover just kind of looks like a zombie). Who ever said television and comic books make us brain-dead zombies?

S. Pearl Sharp on NPR

S. Pearl Sharp, author of Black Women For Beginners, has written a moving essay for NPR's "Tell Me More," in response to the 1974 play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf," and Tyler Perry's big screen adaptation, For Colored Girls, in theaters now. The essay is poetic, touching, and beautifully written. What else could anyone expect from an author like Pearl? Take a look at npr.com.