Excitement

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 173 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Chasing Beauty

  “Your Aunt bought”: JLG Jr. to GPG, May 24, 1888, GFP. Jack gives further details about the painting: it “was shipped on a sailing vessel for New York . . . I also enclose the receipts of the seller of the picture in which he states the period at which it was painted. This may be necessary to enable you to get it through without duty as an old painting. When it arrives, please send it to my house.” See also Carter, 107; Tharp, 138. “What is most”: Travel Album: Spain and Portugal, Volume II, 1888; Ford, Handbook, 377. For an in-depth discussion of the Spain albums, see Madeleine Haddon, “Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Travel Albums from Spain,” Fellow Wanderer, 55–69. “The severe, simple”: Ford, Handbook, 372. “And there is no conqueror”: Ford, Handbook, 374. See also Irving, Alhambra, 70. “Your energetic Aunt”: JLG Jr. to GPG, April 29, 1888, GFP. “travelling and sightseeing”: JLG Jr. to GPG, May 24, 1888, GFP. “At last we have”: JLG Jr. to GAG, June 13, 1888, GFP. writers, and hangers-on: Daniel Curtis recorded the guest list for a typical soiree in his diary: “JL Gardners, Idita de Hurtado and her husband, Marchese Bentivoglio d’Aragona, Princess da Montenegro, Mrs. Paffius, Mocenigo, the S. Howes, Dr. Clotaldo Pincco, R. Browning, Wm Rh Coolidge, &c, &c.” Daniel Curtis Diary, no. 449, July 17, 1888, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, Italy. the “season is over”: JLG Jr. to GPG, July 3, 1888, GFP. “trust your eye”: Carter, 110. “with motion and light”: She installed the fireplace in the music room at Green Hill, where it was often lit for musical performances, and later in the Raphael Room on the second floor of Fenway Court. See Gilbert Wendell Longstreet and Morris Carter, General Catalogue (Boston, Printed for the Trustees, 1935), 118. FIFTEEN: “DAZZLING,” 1889 “Tonight is the night”: Ellen Coolidge to Frances Curtis, April 26, 1889, Curtis Family Papers, 1766-2000, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. The “social atmosphere”: Saturday Evening Gazette, April 1889. “La Primavera by Botticelli”: Ellen Coolidge to Frances Curtis, April 26, 1889, Curtis Family Papers, Schlesinger. “fine, old tapestries”: “Boston’s Fancy Ball,” New York Times, April 26, 1889. Boston’s high society: Boston Daily Globe listed all the women on the dais: “Mrs. Martin Brimmer, Mrs. W. F. Apthorp, Mrs. Edward Codman, Mrs. Samuel Eliot, Mrs. J. L. Gardner, Mrs. William W. Greenough, Mrs. R. P. Hallowell, Mrs. B. J. Lang, Mrs. C. G. Loring, Mrs. A. L. Mason, Mrs. Edward Robinson, Mrs. F. P. Vinton and Mrs. Henry Whitman.” Boston Daily Globe, April 27, 1889. with his Merry Men: Isabella collected photographs of the evening, which included two of Johns and Bunker; Dennis Miller Bunker as a Troubadour at the Boston Art Students’ Association Ball, 1889; and Clayton Johns in Costume, 19th century, ISG Photographs, ISGM. review titled “Fairyland”: Boston Daily Globe, April 27, 1889.

• From Chasing Beauty

  helped supply costumes: Ruth Cabot recounted to Frances Curtis that Isabella had suggested a Cabot relative go to the ball as Primavera by Botticelli. March 30, 1889, Curtis Family Papers, Schlesinger. There’d been gossip: Isabella Curtis to Frances Curtis, April 15, 1889, Curtis Family Papers, Schlesinger. most “successful beauty”: HA to Elizabeth Cameron, May 2, 1889, HA Letters, vol. 3, 173. feature of student albums: See Anthony Calnek, The Hasty Pudding Theatre: A History of Harvard’s Hairy-Chested Heroines (Cambridge: The Hasty Pudding Club, 1986); see also Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, “Miss Nathan Appleton Takes the Stage,” Object of the Month blog, MHS, June 2019. “our historical other selves”: “The Artists Festival,” Saturday Evening Gazette, 1889. Vienna Opera in 1884: John N. Burk, “Wilhelm Gericke: A Centennial Retrospect,” Musical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (April 1945), 16–87. Now the program: Carter, 114–15. In February 1889: Carter, 113. court-concerts in March: Carter, 115. “high life” might be: Envelope, to ISG, date indecipherable, ISG Papers, ISGM. “Heretofore,” the paper noted: “Mrs. Jack’s Latest Lions,” n.p., December 30, 1896. “Mrs. Jack’s Latest Lion”: “Mrs. Jack’s Latest Lion,” Boston Sunday Post, January 31, 1897. See also ISGAL, 12–15. “cozily tucked up beside”: As quoted in Tharp, 155. “there are all sorts”: ISG to Mrs. Aldrich, October 8, 1888, ISG Papers, ISGM. to make a redingote: Charles Frederick Worth for the House of Worth, fancy dress, late 1880s, early 1890s. Silk velvet with embroidery and beading, Peabody Essex Museum, gift of Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1923 (116746). what they might miss: Carter, 115. “She’s a will o’ wisp”: Carter, 34. brother, John Jr.: The best overview of Bunker and his work is by Erica E. Hirshler in Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1994), 18–89. down to the chair: I thank Shana McKenna for pointing out this similarity. Isabella would own her own Moroni when she bought his Portrait of a Bearded Man in Black (1576) in 1895. La Dama in Rosso (1556–60) was purchased by the National Gallery in London in 1876. SIXTEEN: IN THE MIDDLE OF THINGS, 1890–91 “Travelling must be”: BB to ISG, September 12, 1888, ISG/BB Letters, 26. “You must see”: JSS to ISG, March 1890, as quoted in Carter, 117. “On stage, the torsal”: Town Topics, April 3, 1890, a gossip newspaper published in New York, as quoted in “Notes on John Singer Sargent in New York, 1888–1890,” Archives of American Art Journal 22, no. 4, 1982, 31. “paint a portrait or two”: JSS to ISG, February 28, 1890, ISG Papers, ISGM. See also Carter, 117–18. sort of “rude gesture”: Corinna Lindon Smith, Interesting People: Eighty Years with the Great and the Near-Great (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), 118. “world-renowned pas-seul”: As quoted in Tharp, 145. “Whoever heard”: As quoted in Carter, 118. “New England conscience”: ISG to BB, August 18, 1896, ISG/BB Letters, 63. “intensely respectable”: HJ to ISG, June 24, 1890, HJ/Zorzi, 154. “most important churches”: Carter, 120. London: “Aunty Belle”: GAG to GPG, undated, GFP.

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  Oftentimes, we compete with one another as to who can guess with the greatest accuracy what image will appear next on the wall. Never once do we or our neighbors question the nature of our lives in the cave. For us, the shadows are real and substantial. And then, one day, one of the prisoners is freed from the chair to which he has been bound all his life and is compelled to stand, turn away from the wall, and approach the fire. Immediately he is blinded by the light of the fire and covers his eyes to block out the pain. But his curiosity soon overcomes the pain, and he removes his hands from his eyes. Slowly, little by little, his eyes adjust to the fire, and he sees the puppeteers holding up their cutouts of trees and mountains, goats and chickens, men and women. He now realizes that the things he has taken for reality his whole life are but insubstantial reflections of the puppeteers’ cutouts. But his journey of self-discovery is not yet complete. With painful step and slow, he stumbles past the fire and out of the cave. The moment he steps out into the upper world, he is blinded again, this time by the far brighter light of the sun. Eventually, his eyes adjust once more, though at first he can only look at the new world around him as it is reflected in a pond or a river. In the end, however, his accustomed eyes allow him to look full on the realities of which the cutouts were but pale imitations. With time, he can even catch glimpses of the sun itself! Overjoyed by his freedom, he desires to stay forever in the upper world, but he knows it is his duty to return to the cave and try to convince others to come with him into the light of reality. This he bravely does, but at the cost of his own life. First, the prisoners mock him and refuse to believe his wild story. Then, when he forcibly frees some of them from their chains, they use their liberated limbs, not to leave the cave, but to kill their would-be rescuer. — Plato, The Republic , Book VII R eflections It is through his famous Allegory of the Cave that Plato illustrates his theory of the Forms. According to that influential theory, all that we see and experience on earth—from natural objects (trees, mountains, animals, people) to man-made things (tables, chairs, works of art) to abstract ideas (goodness, truth, beauty)—are actually imitations of the Forms of those objects, things, and ideas that exist in the heavenly World of Being. Unlike our World of Becoming, which is constantly changing, decaying, and dying away, the World of Being is perfect and unchanging. {N1} Our earth contains many types of dogs, men, chairs, vases, and theories of justice, but we immediately and intuitively recognize the type or kind to which each belongs.

• From Chasing Beauty

  Tyler, Royall, 367 Uffizi Gallery, 28, 145, 233 Umberto I of Italy, 223–24 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 25 Unitarianism, 49, 90, 92 University of Freiburg, 366 University of Heidelberg, 101 University Place, no. 10, 11 van Dyck, Anthony, 161, 239, 286 Vanity Fair, 350 Velázquez, Diego, 160, 162–64, 227, 233, 238–39, 242, 317, 325–26 Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (Berenson), 212–13 Venice, 124, 125–31, 133, 142, 144–45, 168–69, 185–87, 198–99, 219–20, 224, 243–44, 267–68, 283–84 Venus (Titian), 33 Venus de’ Medici, 28 Vermeer, Johannes, 1, 200–203, 213, 234, 390 Verona, 185 Veronese, Paolo, 161, 174 Veronese Room, 151, 283, 379 Victoria, Queen, 81, 143 Vienna, 61, 62, 85, 144 Vienna Opera, 176 View of the Riva Degli Schiavoni and the Piazzetta (Guardi), 227–28 Vigilance Committee, 46 Villa Livia mosaic, 244–45, 274–75 Vincent Club, 301 Virgin and Child (Conegliano), 281 Virgin and Child (Ghiberti), 296, 296 Virgin and Child in the Clouds, The, 280–81 Virgin and Child over Saints (Martini), 293 Virgin and Child with a Swallow (Pesellino), 197 Virgin and the Child with an Angel (Botticelli), 266–67, 299 Virginian, The (Wister), 177 Virgin of Mercy (Zurbarán), 166, 166–67, 359 Vladimir, 83 Volpi, Elia, 332 von Arnim, Bettina, 70 Wadi Halfa, Egypt, 81–82 Wagner, Richard, 142–43, 176–77, 183, 243, 247 Wagner Society, 195 Ward, Sam, 102, 103, 104, 107 Warren, Fiske, 295–96 Warren, Gretchen Osgood, 42, 216, 295, 295–96, 334–35 Warren, Ned, 296 Warren, Samuel, 233, 296 Warren, Susan, 92, 233, 274 Washington, D.C., 41, 89, 103–4, 137–38, 297, 339, 340, 348, 375 Washington Monument, 137 Waterston, Anna Cabot Lowell Quincy, 23, 25, 27 Waterston, Helen, 9, 23–30, 34–35, 37, 41 Waterston, Robert Cassie, 23 Watkins, Carleton, 99 Webster, Daniel, 43 Week Away from Time, A (Fields), 152 Weeks, Edward, 378–79 Wells, Ida B., 206 Wharton, Edith, 69–70, 100, 211–12, 243, 285, 286, 319, 335, 361 Whig Party, 47 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 2, 94–95, 128, 149, 151–52, 176, 195, 196, 203, 214, 224, 256, 268, 350, 374 White, Henry M., 262–63 White, Stanford, 192 White Fox, The (Okakura), 353 White Mountains, 89 Whitman, Sarah Wyman, 56, 91, 174, 211 Whitman, Walt, 191 Whittemore, Thomas, 352, 353, 364 Widor, Charles-Marie, 318 Wilde, Oscar, 127, 195, 214, 215 Wilkinson, J. G., 76 Wilson, Woodrow, 367 Wings of the Dove, The (James), 131, 303 Wister, Owen, 177 Woman, An Enigma (Sargent), 157–58 Woman of No Importance, A (Wilde), 127 Woolf, Virginia, 214 World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), 204–7, 211, 213, 274, 290 World War I, 364–72, 375 Worth, Charles Frederick, 68, 69, 95, 131–32, 135, 176, 178, 184, 190, 223, 245, 286 Wunderkammer, 5, 290 Yeats, W. B., 342 Yellow Room, 143, 218, 224, 283, 294, 352 Yellowstone National Park, 99 Yokohama, 112–13 Yosemite, 98, 99 Yu-Hai, 119–20 Zorn, Anders, 136, 207–9, 208, 212, 219–21, 220, 223, 261, 275, 326–27, 350 Zorn, Emma, 208, 212, 219 Zurbarán, Francisco de, 161, 166, 275, 359

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Ray is in good form. I stare at my Mac, and with the same childish glee building, I open my laptop and open up my email. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Strong Able Hands Date: May 30 2011 22:22 To: Christian Grey Dear Sir, A very pleasant young man massaged my back. Yes. Very pleasant indeed. I wouldn’t have encountered Jean-Paul in the ordinary departure lounge—so thank you again for that treat. I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to email once we take off, and I need my beauty sleep since I’ve not been sleeping so well recently. Pleasant dreams, Mr. Grey…thinking of you. Ana Oh, he’s going to flip out—and I shall be airborne and out of reach. Serves him right. If I’d been in the ordinary departure lounge, then Jean-Paul wouldn’t have gotten his hands on me. He was a very nice young man, in a blond, perma-tanned way—honestly, who has a tan in Seattle? It’s just so wrong. I think he was gay—but I’ll just keep that detail to myself. I stare at my email. Kate is right. It is like shooting fish in a barrel with him. My subconscious stares at me with an ugly twist to her mouth. Do you really want to wind him up? What he’s done is sweet, you know! He cares about you and wants you to travel in style. Yes, but he could have asked me or told me. Not made me look like a complete klutz at check-in. I press send and wait, feeling like a very naughty girl. “Miss Steele, you’ll need to stow your laptop for takeoff,” the over-made-up flight attendant says politely. She makes me jump. My guilty conscience is at work. “Oh, sorry.” Crap. Now I’ll have to wait to know if he’s replied. She hands me a soft blanket and pillow, showing her perfect teeth. I drape the blanket over my knees. It’s nice to feel pampered sometimes. First class has filled up, except for the seat beside me, which is still unoccupied. Oh no… A disturbing thought crosses my mind. Perhaps the seat is Christian’s. Oh shit. No, he wouldn’t do that. Would he? I told him I didn’t want him to come with me. I glance anxiously at my watch, and then the disembodied voice from the flight deck announces, “Cabin crew, doors to automatic and cross check.” What does that mean? Are they closing the doors? My scalp prickles as I sit in palpitating anticipation. The seat next to me is the only unoccupied one in the sixteen-seat cabin. The plane jolts as it pulls away from the gate, and I breathe a sigh of relief but feel a faint tingle of disappointment too—no Christian for four days. I take a peek at my BlackBerry. From: Christian Grey Subject: Enjoy It While You Can Date: May 30 2011 22:25 To: Anastasia Steele Dear Miss Steele,

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  My grandmother didn’t care. To her, a home economics major fresh out of high school and tired of respectability, my grandfather must have cut a dashing figure. I sometimes imagine them in every American town in those years before the war, him in baggy pants and a starched undershirt, brim hat cocked back on his head, offering a cigarette to this smart-talking girl with too much red lipstick and hair dyed blond and legs nice enough to model hosiery for the local department store. He’s telling her about the big cities, the endless highway, his imminent escape from the empty, dust-ridden plains, where big plans mean a job as a bank manager and entertainment means an ice-cream soda and a Sunday matinee, where fear and lack of imagination choke your dreams so that you already know on the day that you’re born just where you’ll die and who it is that’ll bury you. He won’t end up like that, my grandfather insists; he has dreams, he has plans; he will infect my grandmother with the great peripatetic itch that had brought both their forebears across the Atlantic and half of a continent so many years before. They eloped just in time for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and my grandfather enlisted. And at this point the story quickens in my mind like one of those old movies that show a wall calendar’s pages peeled back faster and faster by invisible hands, the headlines of Hitler and Churchill and Roosevelt and Normandy spinning wildly to the drone of bombing attacks, the voice of Edward R. Murrow and the BBC. I watch as my mother is born at the army base where Gramps is stationed; my grandmother is Rosie the Riveter, working on a bomber assembly line; my grandfather sloshes around in the mud of France, part of Patton’s army. Gramps returned from the war never having seen real combat, and the family headed to California, where he enrolled at Berkeley under the GI bill. But the classroom couldn’t contain his ambitions, his restlessness, and so the family moved again, first back to Kansas, then through a series of small Texas towns, then finally to Seattle, where they stayed long enough for my mother to finish high school. Gramps worked as a furniture salesman; they bought a house and found themselves bridge partners. They were pleased that my mother proved bright in school, although when she was offered early admission into the University of Chicago, my grandfather forbade her to go, deciding that she was still too young to be living on her own.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Taking my hand, he leads me over to the antique four-poster bed. There are shackles attached at each corner, fine metal chains with leather cuffs, glinting against the red satin. Oh boy, I think my heart is going to jump out of my chest, and I’m melting from the inside out, desire coursing through me. Could I be any more excited? “Stand here.” I am facing the bed. He leans down and whispers in my ear. “Wait here. Keep your eyes on the bed. Picture yourself lying here, bound and totally at my mercy.” Oh my. He moves away for a moment, and I can hear him near the door fetching something. All my senses are hyperalert, my hearing more acute. He’s picked up something from the rack of whips and paddles by the door. Holy cow. What is he going to do? I feel him behind me. He takes my hair, pulls it into a ponytail behind me, and starts to braid it. “While I like your pigtails, Anastasia, I am impatient to have you right now. So one will have to do.” His voice is low, soft. His deft fingers skim my back occasionally as they work down my hair, and each casual touch is like a sweet, electric shock against my skin. He fastens the end with a hair tie, then gently tugs the braid so I’m forced to step back flush against him. He pulls again to the side so that I angle my head, giving him easier access to my neck. Leaning down, he nuzzles my neck, tracing his teeth and tongue from the base of my ear to my shoulder. He hums softly as he does, and the sound resonates through me. Right down…right down there, inside me. Unbidden, I groan quietly. “Hush, now,” he breathes against my skin. He holds up his hands in front of me, his arms touching mine. In his right hand is a flogger. I remember the name from my first introduction to this room. “Touch it,” he whispers, and he sounds like the devil himself. My body flames in response. Tentatively, I reach out and brush the long strands. It has many long fronds, all soft suede with small beads at the end. “I will use this. It will not hurt, but it will bring your blood to the surface of your skin and make you very sensitive.” Oh, he says it won’t hurt. “What are the safewords, Anastasia?” “Um…yellow and red, Sir,” I whisper. “Good girl. Remember, most of your fear is in your mind.” He drops the flogger on the bed, and his hands move to my waist. “You won’t be needing these.” He hooks his fingers into my panties and sweeps them down my legs. I step unsteadily out of them, supporting myself on the ornate post of the bed.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “Stand still,” he orders, and he kisses my behind and then gently nips me twice, making me tense. “Now lie down. Faceup,” he adds as he smacks me hard on the behind, making me jump. Hastily, I crawl onto the bed’s hard, unyielding mattress and lie down, looking up at him. The satin of the sheet beneath me is soft and cool against my skin. His face is impassive, except for his eyes, which glow with a barely leashed excitement. “Hands above your head,” he says, and I do as I’m bid. Wow, my body hungers for him. I want him already. He turns, and out of the corner of my eyes, I watch him saunter back over to the chest of drawers, returning with the iPod and what looks like an eye mask, similar to the one I used on my flight to Atlanta. The thought makes me want to smile, but I can’t quite make my lips cooperate. I am too consumed with anticipation. I just know my face is completely immobile, my eyes huge, as I gaze at him. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he shows me the iPod. It has a strange antenna device as well as headphones. How odd. I frown as I try to figure this out. “This transmits what’s playing on the iPod to the system in the room,” Christian answers my unspoken query as he taps the small antenna. “I can hear what you’re hearing, and I have a remote control unit for it.” He smirks his private-joke smile and holds up a small, flat device that looks like a very hip calculator. He leans across me, inserting the earbuds gently into my ears, and puts the iPod down somewhere on the bed above my head. “Lift your head,” he commands, and I do so immediately. Slowly, he slides the mask on, pulling the elastic over the back of my head, and I’m blind. The elastic on the mask holds the earbuds in place. I can still hear him, though the sound is muffled as he rises from the bed. I’m deafened by my own breathing—it’s shallow and erratic, reflecting my excitement. Christian takes my left arm, stretches it gently to the left-hand corner, and attaches the leather cuff around my wrist. His long fingers stroke the length of my arm once he’s finished. Oh! His touch elicits a delicious, tickly shiver. I hear him move slowly around to the other side, where he takes my right arm and cuffs it. Again, his long fingers linger along my arm. Oh my… I am fit to burst already. Why is this so erotic? He moves to the bottom of the bed and grabs both of my ankles. “Lift your head again,” he orders.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  I want to move, to writhe—to escape or to welcome each blow, I don’t know; it’s so overwhelming. I can’t pull my arms…my legs are stuck…I am held very firmly in place…and again he strikes across my breasts. I cry out. And it’s a sweet agony—bearable, just. No, not immediately, but as my skin sings with each blow in perfect counterpoint to the music in my head, I am dragged into a dark, dark part of my psyche that surrenders to this most erotic sensation. Yes—I get this. He hits me across my hip, then moves in swift blows over my pubic hair, on my thighs, and down my inner thighs…and back up my body…across my hips. He keeps going as the music reaches a climax, and then suddenly the music stops. And so does he. Then the singing starts again…building and building, and he rains down blows on me…and I groan and writhe. Once again, it ceases and all is quiet…except my wild breathing…and wild yearning. For… Oh, what’s happening? What’s he going to do now? The excitement is almost unbearable. I’ve entered a very dark, carnal place. The bed moves and shifts as I feel him clamber over me, and the song starts again. He’s got it on repeat. This time, it’s his nose and lips that take the place of the fur…running down my neck and throat, kissing, sucking…trailing down to my breasts… Ah! Taunting each of my nipples in turn, his tongue swirling around one while his fingers relentlessly tease the other. I groan, loudly I think, though I can’t hear. I am lost. Lost in him, lost in the astral, seraphic voices, lost to all the sensations I cannot escape… I am completely at the mercy of his expert touch. He moves down to my belly, his tongue circling my navel, following the path of the flogger and the fur. I moan. He’s kissing and sucking and nibbling, moving south, and then his tongue is there. At the junction of my thighs. I throw my head back and cry out as I almost detonate into orgasm… I’m on the brink, and he stops. No! The bed shifts, and he kneels between my legs. He leans toward the bedpost, and the cuff on my ankle is suddenly gone. I pull my leg to the middle of the bed…resting it against him. He leans over to the opposite post and frees my other leg. His hands travel quickly down both my legs, squeezing and kneading, bringing life back into them. Then, grasping my hips, he lifts me so my back is no longer on the bed. I am arched, resting on my shoulders. What? He’s kneeling up between my legs, and in one swift, slamming move, he’s inside me. Oh fuck! And I cry out again. The quiver of my impending orgasm begins, and he stills. The quiver dies—oh no, he’s going to torture me further. “Please!” I wail.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  He grips me harder. In warning? I don’t know. His fingers dig into the flesh of my behind as I lay panting, so I purposefully still. Very slowly, he starts to move again…out and then in…agonizingly slowly. Holy fuck—please! I’m screaming inside. And as the number of voices in the choral piece increases, so does his pace, infinitesimally, he’s so controlled…so in time with the music. And I can no longer bear it. “Please,” I beg, and in one swift move, he lowers me back onto the bed, and he’s lying on top of me, his hands on the bed beside my breasts as he supports his weight, and he thrusts into me. As the music reaches its climax, I fall…free-fall…into the most intense, agonizing orgasm I have ever had, and Christian follows me, thrusting hard into me three more times, finally stilling, then collapsing on top of me. As my consciousness returns from wherever it’s been, Christian pulls out of me. The music has stopped, and I can feel him stretch across my body as he undoes the cuff on my right wrist. I groan as my hand is freed. He quickly frees my other hand, gently pulls the mask from my eyes, and removes the earbuds. I blink in the soft, dim light and stare up into his intense gray gaze. “Hi,” he murmurs. “Hi yourself,” I breathe shyly back at him. His lips quirk up into a smile, and he leans down and kisses me softly. “Well done, you,” he whispers. “Turn over.” Holy fuck, what’s he going to do now? His eyes soften. “I’m just going to rub your shoulders.” “Oh, okay.” I roll stiffly onto my front. I am so tired. Christian sits astride me and starts to massage my shoulders. I groan loudly. He has such strong, knowing fingers. Leaning down, he kisses my head. “What was that music?” I mumble almost inarticulately. “It’s called Spem in Alium, a forty-part motet by Thomas Tallis.” “It was…overwhelming.” “I’ve always wanted to fuck to it.” “Not another first, Mr. Grey?” “Indeed, Miss Steele.” I groan again as his fingers work their magic on my shoulders. “Well, it’s the first time I’ve fucked to it, too,” I murmur sleepily. “You and I, we’re giving each other many firsts.” His voice is matter-of-fact. “What did I say to you in my sleep, Chris—er, Sir?” His hands pause their ministrations for a moment. “You said lots of things, Anastasia. You talked about cages and strawberries. That you wanted more, and that you missed me.” Oh, thank heavens for that. “Is that all?” The relief in my voice is evident. Christian stops his heavenly massage and shifts so he’s lying beside me, his head propped up on his elbow. He’s frowning. “What did you think you’d said?” Oh crap. “That I thought you were ugly, conceited, and that you were hopeless in bed.”

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I headed toward the basement and grabbed a thong off of the top of the dryer. To my surprise, Life was breaking through my resolve. By the time I returned to the living room wearing my thong, a hypnotic beat was pumping. Life’s eyes were glued to me as he studied me from head to toe. I walked across the room, then moved toward the center of it. I faced him and began to dance, moving with steady, light gestures. I flashed Life a warm, radiant smile as I worked my hips and moved my arms in fluid motions. I got lost in the hip-hop beat and savored each note as the thong’s fabric rubbed between my phat ass cheeks. My sensuality warmed me up, I was hyped. I let go and really shook my ass and didn’t care how crazy I looked doing it! Out of spite to get back at Smooth Willie, I popped my coochie like I was an experienced stripper. I felt like a sensuous woman again. Life confirmed that I still was desirable, even if Smooth had stopped treating me that way. “You’re a good dancer, Yani. A real damned good dancer!” Life commented. I moved closer to him, stopping a few inches away. “I know,” I answered, while slowly gyrating my hips in his face. Life leaned forward and pressed his soft lips just above my pussy. “Work it for Daddy!” he yelled. Then he removed a dollar from his wad of money and stuck it on the side of my thong. I placed my hands on my knees, turned around, arched my back, and rubbed my ass on top of him. “Got-damn, girl! You got some big, fat ’n juicy pussy lips. I bet you taste sweeter than honey. You one of a kind, fo’ sure!” Life mumbled as I continued to shake my ass. He reached out and pulled my thong to the side and gently played with my anus until my pussy was wet and slick. Feeling Life’s thumb moving around my erogenous zone made chills run up my spine. As I listened to his music I closed my eyes and imagined him spitting between my ass cheeks, relaxing my sphincter muscles, then letting his tool experience my deep asshole. When Life stopped playing with my ass, my thong string snapped back into place. I shook myself from my fantasy when he began to stuff more dollars in my little thong string. “Hey! I got enough bills around my waist to make me a money belt! I like this game!” I said, flashing a big smile. Life’s eyes were glossy, as if he had been hypnotized into a trance-like state. I slowly stroked my fingers under his chin, then fondled my bare breasts in front of him. As Life stuffed more dollars in my thong, I stood upright again, then used both hands to open my pussy to show him what I was working with.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  When finally the Soviets were forced to withdraw from Afghanistan in February 1989 and the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991, the Arab-Afghans relished a heady, if inaccurate, sense of having defeated a great world power. They now planned to fulfill Azzam’s dream of reconquering all the lost Muslim lands. Throughout the world at this time, political Islam seemed in the ascendant. Hamas had become a serious challenge to Fatah. In Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) had won a decisive victory over the secular National Liberation Front (FLN) in the municipal polls of 1990, and the Islamist ideologue Hassan Al-Turabi had come to power in the Sudan. After the Soviet withdrawal, Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda, which began humbly as an alumni organization for those Arab-Afghans who wanted to take the jihad forward. At this point the entity, whose name simply means “the Base,” had no coherent ideology or clear goal. And so some of its affiliates returned home as freelances with the aim of deposing corrupt secularist regimes and replacing them with an Islamic government. Others, still committed to Azzam’s classical jihadism, joined local Muslims in their struggle against the Russians in Chechnya and Tajikistan and the Serbs in Bosnia. Yet to their dismay, they found that they were unable to transform these national conflicts into what they considered a true jihad. Indeed, in Bosnia they were not only de trop but a positive liability. [image file=image_rsrcDZA.jpg] The Bosnian War (1992–95) saw one of the last genocides of the twentieth century. Unlike the two preceding it, the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, this mass killing was conducted on the basis of religious rather than ethnic identity. Despite the widespread assumption in the West that the divisions in the Balkans were ancient and ingrained and that the violence was ineradicable because of its strong “religious” element, this communal intolerance was relatively new. Jews, Christians, and Muslims had lived together peacefully under Ottoman rule for five hundred years and continued doing so after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, when Serbs, Slovenians, Slavic Muslims, and Croats had formed the multireligious federation of Yugoslavia (“Land of the South Slavs”). Yugoslavia was dismantled by Nazi Germany in 1941 but was revived after the Second World War by the communist leader Josip Broz Tito (r. 1945–80) under the slogan “Brotherhood and Unity.” After his death, however, the radical Serbian nationalism of Slobodan Milosevic and the equally assertive Croatian nationalism of Franjo Tudjman pulled the country apart, with Bosnia caught in the middle. Slavic nationalism had a strongly Christian flavor—Serbs were Orthodox and Croatians Roman Catholic—but Bosnia, with a Muslim majority and Serbian, Croatian, Jewish, and Gypsy communities, opted for a secular state that respected all religions. Lacking the military capacity to defend themselves, Bosnian Muslims knew they would be persecuted if they remained part of Serbia, and so in April 1992 they declared independence. The United States and the European Union recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina as a sovereign state.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I began to cry with pleasure as Life caused my ass cheeks to bounce up and down. “If the dick’s good, keep crying. Cry, baby. Cry or I’ll take it outta this hot pussy!” Life demanded. I cried until I felt another orgasm swell up inside of me. I tried to dig my nails into the carpet but couldn’t hold on to a single fiber of it. “I’m about to. Damn. I’m—I’m about to cum!” I whispered in a very high pitch. Despite us being in my boss’s office minutes before he was due to arrive, Life never stopped stroking me—and I came for the second time. “Where do you think you’re going?” Life said as I tried to crawl away. “Oh no you don’t. Keep your ass right here.” I was feeling good and both of our bodies were wet with sweat. “This dick feels so good! Fuck—what are you doing to me now?” I exclaimed. “I know what you need. Turn over on your back,” Life said. I did. “Take this dick!” Life placed each of my legs on his shoulders. He looked into my eyes as he worked his hips in a rhythmic motion, bending down to kiss me as he kept thrusting himself in my pussy. Suddenly I was scared. “I think I heard something. We better stop! This is my boss’s office! I can’t get caught fuckin’ up in here!” I said. I instinctively lifted my legs from Life’s shoulders, pried myself off of his dick, and ran to the glass-cubed wall to see if anyone was coming. My hands shook as I peeped through a small slit in the blinds. Before I knew it, Life had pushed my legs apart from behind. “But, but—what if—” I complained. Life ignored me and began kissing, sucking, and tonguing my ass like he was getting paid to turn me out. “Oh shit!” I said. Smooth would never lick my asshole but I loved the way Life did it. The next thing I felt were heavy balls smacking up against me. Life slid into me and began pumping deep while gripping my waist tightly, until I forgot all about my boss and came again. “Did you like all of that—huh? Did you like that, you freaky office hottie?” Life asked. “Thank you for fucking the shit out of me,” I said. “I needed this so bad. Thank you!” I moaned. Life dropped to his knees. I felt the most powerful sensation as I dripped into his mouth. His talented tongue persuaded my body to release yet another quick orgasm. He sucked my juicy nectar as he let it pour out of me. When I was dry, Life pulled away from me and began picking up his clothes. I turned around, speechless. I was drained, but also stunned when I noticed his tool was still fully erect. Life had never come, despite all of the nasty things that we’d done in every which way possible.

• From Emotional Beats: How to Easily Convert your Writing into Palpable Feelings (2018)

  Ways to Describe WritingAuthor Lucy Mitchell (aka Blondewritemore) has come up with these exciting ways of describing her writing progress: “Tonight I wrote 456 words!”“Today I nailed 1,290 words!”“This afternoon I banged out 1,456 words!”“I only managed to cobble together 45 words today”“I scraped together 100 words this afternoon”“Today I conjured up 2,500 words!”“Tonight I rattled off 567 words!”“This morning I whipped up 800 words!”“Today I pumped out 765 words!”“Tonight I hammered home 987 words!”“I churned out 309 words!““Today I could only squeeze out 154 words”“This afternoon 1,300 words gushed out of me!”“Today I belted out 1,899 words!”“Today I pounded out 1,900 words”“This afternoon I blew past my goal with 1,300 words”“This morning I coughed up 456 words”“Today 2,300 words shot out of me”“Boom!” (exploding fist hand action) “2,090 words!” AcknowledgmentsAmong many others, this book contains beats by: Alicia DeanAngela AckermanBeem WeeksBlondewritemoreCharles E. YallowitzCristina MallinChristine PlouvierC.S. LakinD. Wallace PeachDavid WindDon MassenzioEamon GosneyElizabeth GeorgeElle BocaJennifer OwenbyLara EakinsMacMillan Dictionary (visit for more ways to describe looks)Mark NicholMMJayePaula CappaQuoteTVRayne HallSue ColettaWriteWorld (click for more alternatives to “walking”)Writing Helpers (click for more ways to describe voices)The definition of Emotional Beats comes from the Writer’s Digest article, How to Amp up Dialogue with Emotional Beats by Todd A. Stone. Thank you for sharing your beautiful words with us. I am also grateful to Elle Boca , D.G. Kaye , Maria Messini , Rachael Ritchey , and Gabriele for pointing out the mistakes in the original manuscript. Once again, I have Alex Saskalidis and Dimitris Fousekis to thank for their beautiful art. I should also mention all fellow Indie authors—I know how hard it is what you do—and my wonderful social media followers. To them, to my wife, my parents, and to the many teachers who have taught me so much in this life, as well as to my readers, without whose support this endeavor would matter but little, I offer my deep gratitude. About the author [image file=Image00002.jpg] Nicholas Rossis lives to write and does so from his cottage on the edge of a magical forest in Athens, Greece. When not composing epic fantasies or short sci-fi stories, he chats with fans and colleagues, writes blog posts, walks his dog, and enjoys the antics of two silly cats and his daughter, all of whom claim his lap as home. Nicholas is all around the Internet, but the best place to connect with him would be on his blog, http://nicholasrossis.me/ You can check out his books on Amazon: http://author.to/rossis Notes from the authorAlso available from Nicholas C.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  document, and it was a principle of the canonist reformers that the Church could not entertain any legal proposition that was based on secular documentation alone: there must be confirmation in clerical archives. There was, also, a sense of exhilaration among the clerical revolutionaries. They were bringing mankind out of the dark past, into a brave new world of administrative efficiency. Away with government by illiterates and barbarous folk-laws! This was a view shared by many, especially, of course, clerics. The growth of an efficient papal court and chancery not only made the exercise of papal-clerical authority easier, it also attracted litigants and business. From the late eleventh century, every index of papal and central church activity began to show a sharp increase. ‘Big’ government and papal claims went hand in hand: the demand for power expanded pari passu with the administrative capacity to exercise it. In England, for instance, there had been no legislative councils until 1070 (except one in 786); in the period 1070–1312 there were between twenty and thirty. The West had played little part in the early general councils; then, between 1123–1311 there were seven. Papal correspondence increased accordingly (making allowance for a higher survival rate the later the period), from an average of one a year under Benedict IX, 1033–46, to thirty-five up to 1130, 179 under Alexander III, 1159–81, 280 by the turn of the thirteenth century and 3646 by the beginning of the fourteenth. Virtually all this business was legal. Of course, the twelfth century was an age of legal discovery and expansion generally. Every other kind of court, especially the royal court, was expanding fast. But canon law, radiating from Rome, set the pace and kept the lead by far. The run-up to the canonical explosion took about seventy years, from 1070–1140; then, in a mere decade, it suddenly became a universal fact of life. We saw how the notions of Christianity penetrated deep into every crevice of society in the Carolingian period; now, a papally-controlled legal system suddenly moved into the forefront of every individual’s experience. It began to settle vast areas of ordinary life in great and expensive legal detail: the administration of the sacraments and all other aspects of the strictly religious side of existence; the rights, duties, payments and obligations of the humblest parish priest and his congregation; the dress, education, ordination, status, crimes, punishments of clerics; charity, alms, usury, wills, graveyards, churches, prayers, masses for the dead, burials, marriage, inheritance, legitimacy, sex and morals. Until the 1040s, the popes had only a vague idea of what was going on at the highest level in places like England, north Germany or Spain; a

• From The Case for God (2009)

  [image file=image_rsrc4UU.jpg] Faith and ReasonBy the end of the eleventh century, philosophers and theologians in the West had embarked on a project that, they believed, was entirely new. They had begun to apply their reasoning powers systematically to the truths of faith. By now Europe was beginning to recover from the dark age that had descended after the fall of Rome. The Benedictine monks of Cluny in Burgundy had initiated a campaign to educate the clergy and laity, many of whom were woefully ignorant of the rudiments of Christianity. Hundreds of churches were built throughout Christendom, even in quite small villages and settlements, where people could attend Mass and hear the biblical readings. This instruction was reinforced by the cult of pilgrimage. During the long, difficult trek to a holy place— Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Conques, or Glastonbury—lay folk experienced a “conversion” of life, turning away from their secular affairs and toward the centers of holiness. They traveled in a community of pilgrims, dedicated for the duration to the monastic ideals of austerity, charity, celibacy, and nonviolence. The rich had to share the hardships of the poor, who, in turn, realized that their poverty had spiritual value.1 Instead of being educated in the niceties of doctrine, Western Christians were introduced to their faith as a practical way of life. By the end of the century, there was a marked rise in commitment among the laity, and Europeans had begun to forge a new and distinctively Western Christian identity. Meanwhile, as they became reacquainted with the intellectual heritage of their more sophisticated neighbors in the Greek Byzantine and Islamic worlds, European monks had started to think and pray in a more “rational” way. One of the leading exponents of this new spirituality was Anselm of Laon, abbot of the prestigious monastery and school at Bec in Normandy, who was appointed archbishop of Canterbury by William Rufus in 1093.2 Excited by the new vogue for reasoning, he wanted to make traditional Christian teaching rationally coherent. There was no question of making his loyalty to God dependent upon rational proof; instead he saw his writings “advancing through faith to understanding, rather than proceeding through understanding to faith.”3 Men and women had to use all their faculties when they approached God, and Anselm wanted to make truths grasped intuitively intelligible, so that every part of his mind was involved in the contemplation of God. Augustine had taught the Christians of the West that all their mental activities reflected the divine, and this was particularly true of their reasoning powers. “I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving,” Anselm prayed in his Proslogion (“Colloquy”) with God, “that you have made me in your image, so that I can remember you, think of you and love you.”4 This was the raison d’etre of every “rational creature,” so people must spare no effort in “remembering, understanding and loving the Supreme Good.”5

• From Open (2009)

  One of the many perks for kids playing in the tournament is a field trip to Busch Gardens in Tampa. On the bus to the amusement park I bring Perry up to speed, tell him about my public humiliation, describe how miserable I am at the Bollettieri Academy. And at Bradenton Academy. I tell him I’m close to failing. That’s where I lose him. For once he’s not able to make my problem sound coherent. He loves school. He dreams of attending a fine Eastern college, then law school. I change the subject. I grill him about Jamie. Did she ask about me? How does she look? Does she wear my ankle bracelet? I tell Perry I want to send him back to Vegas with a special present for Jamie. Maybe something nice from Busch Gardens. That would be cool, he agrees. We’re not at Busch Gardens ten minutes before Perry sees a booth filled with stuffed animals. On a high shelf sits an enormous black-and-white panda, its legs sticking left and right, its tiny red tongue hanging out. Andre—you need to get Jamie that! Well, sure, but it’s not for sale. You have to win the grand prize to get that panda, and no one wins this game. It’s rigged. I don’t like things that are rigged. Nah. You just have to toss two rubber rings around the neck of a Coke bottle. We’re athletes. We’ve got this. We try for half an hour, scattering rubber rings all over the booth. Not one ring comes close to lassoing a Coke bottle. OK, Perry says. Here’s what we do. You distract the lady running the booth, I’ll sneak back there and put two of these rings on the bottles. I don’t know. What if we get caught? But then I remember: It’s for Jamie. Anything for Jamie. I call out to the booth lady: Excuse me, ma’am, I have a question. She turns. Yes? I ask something inane about the rules of ringtoss. In my peripheral vision I see Perry tiptoe into the booth. Four seconds later he leaps back. I won! I won! The booth lady spins around. She sees two Coke bottles with rubber rings around their necks. She looks shocked. Then skeptical. Now wait just a minute, kid— I won! Give me my panda! I didn’t see— That’s your problem if you didn’t see. That’s not the rule, you have to see. Where does it say you have to see? I want to talk to your supervisor! Get Mr. Busch Gardens himself down here! I’m taking this whole amusement park to court. What kind of a gyp is this? I paid a dollar to play this game, and that’s an implied contract. You owe me a panda. I’m suing. My father is suing. You have exactly three seconds to get me my panda, which I won fair and fucking square!

• From How the Bible Actually Works (2019)

  just bad product placement, though that’s only the case in Christian Bibles. In the Jewish Bible, these books are found at the very end. Why? Because that’s where they belong. But why? Because Chronicles is not a repeat of 1 Samuel through 2 Kings. It is a retelling of those books from a much later point in Jewish history. In fact, it is nothing less than an act of reimaging God. To make a long story short, 1 Samuel through 2 Kings were probably written before and during the Babylonian exile, and the main question these books address is, “How did we get into this mess? What did we do to deserve exile?” The short answer is, “You committed apostasy by worshiping foreign gods, with your kings leading the way.” In other words, these books interpret events of history and pronounce a guilty verdict on Judah. But 1 and 2 Chronicles were written centuries later, probably no earlier than about 400 BCE and more likely closer to 300 or even a bit later—so somewhere in the middle of the Persian period (which began in 538) and perhaps as late as the Greek period (which began with the conquest by the Greeks under Alexander the Great in 332). And these books answer a different question altogether, not “What did we do to deserve this?” but “After all this time, is God still with us?” Once again, we revisit our theme: as times changed, the ancient Jews had to reprocess what it meant to be the chosen people—if indeed that label even meant anything anymore. Seeing how these late postexilic Jews reprocessed their entire history is for me (and I’m not kidding), the most exciting part of the Old Testament , because 1 and 2 Chronicles are nothing less than one big act of reimagining God , of accepting the sacred responsibility to creatively retell the past in order to bridge that past to a difficult present and thus to hear God’s voice afresh once again. And just how creative these books are is evident by how different they are, page after page, from the earlier history in 1 Samuel through 2 Kings. One story —the reign of King Manasseh—gets to the heart of it. King Manasseh appears in 2 Kings 21:1–18, where he is absolutely the wickedest loser king in the entire Bible. During his long fifty-five-year reign (the longest of any of the Old Testament kings), Manasseh was all kinds of stupid. If there was a way to incite God’s anger, he found it—including the unthinkable: he systematically erected centers of pagan worship, including in the Temple itself, sacrificed his own son, and shed very much innocent blood, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another (2 Kings 21:16). Manasseh was so wicked that the author credits him entirely for the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians a few generations later. Even the sweeping reforms and deep devotion to the Law of his grandson Josiah—who is praised by the writer as no other—weren’t enough to cancel out Manasseh’s

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  When Josiah was about sixteen years old, he had some kind of religious conversion, which probably meant that he wanted to worship Yahweh exclusively.100 This principled devotion to the national god could also have been a declaration of political independence. In 622, some ten years later, Josiah began extensive building work on Solomon’s temple, the great memorial of Judah’s golden age. During the construction, the high priest Hilkiah made a momentous discovery, and hurried to Shaphan, the royal scribe, with this exciting news: “I have found the book of the law [sefer torah] in the temple of Yahweh.”101 This, he said, was the authentic Law, which Yahweh had given to Moses on Mount Sinai. At once Shaphan took the scroll to the king and read it aloud in his presence. [image file=image_rsrc5K1.jpg] Most scholars believe that the scroll contained an early version of the book of Deuteronomy, which describes Moses gathering the people together on Mount Nebo in Transjordan shortly before his death, and delivering a “second law” (Greek: deuteronomion). But instead of being an ancient work, as Shaphan and Hilkiah claimed, it was almost certainly an entirely new scripture. Until the eighth century there had been very little reading or writing of religious texts in either Israel or Judah. There was no early tradition that Yahweh’s teachings had been written down. In J and E, Moses had passed on Yahweh’s commands by word of mouth, and the people had responded verbally: “All that Yahweh has spoken we will do.”102 J and E did not mention the Ten Commandments; originally the stone tablets—“written with the finger of God”103—probably contained the divinely revealed plans for the tabernacle where Yahweh had dwelt with his people during the years in the wilderness.104 It was only later that the Deuteronomist writers added to the JE narrative, explaining that Moses “wrote down all the words of Yahweh” and “took the scroll of the covenant [sefer torah] and read it in the hearing of the people.”105 Now Shaphan claimed that this was the very scroll that Hilkiah had discovered in the temple. For centuries this precious document had been lost, and its teachings had never been implemented. Now that the sefer torah had been discovered, Yahweh’s people could make a new start.

• From Between Us

  As adults, Americans continue to seek this energized happiness. One of Tsai’s studies found that, on their vacations, white Americans wanted to “explore and do exciting things” rather than go to a place where they could totally relax. They also preferred coffee over chamomile tea. And finally, those using illicit drugs preferred stimulants (such as cocaine and amphetamines) over narcotics (heroin). All of these preferences can be interpreted as ways to promote an excited (i.e., outgoing, active, energetic, approach-oriented) kind of happiness that helps you take control. Happiness is also important because it informs choice, a third cultural pillar of American culture. Happiness has not always served choice. Psychologist Shige Oishi and his colleagues tracked the changing meanings of “happiness” in State of the Union addresses and books from around 1800 onwards, and found that the use of happiness to describe an individual, rather than the nation, is recent. Happiness came to describe the satisfaction of desire and self-expression just around the time consumer culture was on the rise—in the 1920s. It was then advertisements started to show smiling people, promising a product would give you pleasure. Happiness became a compass for choice: what you choose is who you are. [image file=image_rsrc2M7.jpg] Figure 5.1 Happiness as the standard of good choice; an ad from 1949. (Image courtesy of Candy Hoover Group, SRL) In one study, white American students were more likely to choose to play basketball over throwing darts when they remembered that playing basketball two weeks earlier had gone well, and had made them happy. “Do what will make you happy.” This advice reflects the options open to a segment of contemporary society, but would have been ill-suited (and irrelevant) in a time where children took over the family business, or had no choice but to work in the nearest factory, or serve the nearest rich family. Happiness is so interwoven with the pillars of the American Dream—success, control, and choice—that it is a “right” emotion. It shows an individual’s perception of self-worth, and reflects a desirable status quo. Happiness marks individual initiative and provides direction. As ingrained as this version of happiness likely is for most readers, modern happiness has not always existed, and, incredibly, does not exist everywhere. In many places, it is not a desirable emotion; in some places, it is “wrong.” Who Would Not Want to Be Happy? Robin Wang, a Chinese philosopher and Daoist, taught her two American-born daughters to stick to “mama Wang’s rules,” which were simple enough: Eat well, exercise daily, get plenty of sleep, and do well in school. One of her daughters inquired: “What about being happy?” “No,” she answered her daughter, “being happy is not important.”