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Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America"A blockbuster of a biography . . . absolutely magnificent." San Francisco Chronicle Jack Kerouac "King of the Beats," unwitting catalyst for the '60s counterculture, groundbreaking author was a complex and compelling man: a star athlete with a literary bent; a spontaneous writer vilified by the New Critics but adored by a large, youthful readership; a devout Catholic but aspiring Buddhist; a lover of freedom plagued by crippling alcoholism. Desolate
"A blockbuster of a biography . . . absolutely magnificent."--San Francisco Chronicle Jack Kerouac--"King of the Beats," unwitting catalyst for the '60s counterculture, groundbreaking author--was a complex and compelling man: a star athlete with a literary bent; a spontaneous writer vilified by the New Critics but adored by a large, youthful readership; a devout Catholic but aspiring Buddhist; a lover of freedom plagued by crippling alcoholism.Desolate Angel follows Kerouac from his childhood in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, to his early years at Columbia where he met Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady, beginning a four-way friendship that would become a sociointellectual legend. In rich detail and with sensitivity, Dennis McNally recounts Kerouac's frenetic cross-country journeys, his experiments with drugs and sexuality, his travels to Mexico and Tangier, the sudden fame that followed the publication of On the Road, the years of literary triumph, and the final near-decade of frustration and depression.
Desolate Angel is a harrowing, compassionate portrait of a man and an artist set in an extraordinary social context. The metamorphosis of America from the Great Depression to the Kennedy administration is not merely the backdrop for Kerouac's life but is revealed to be an essential element of his art . . . for Kerouac was above all a witness to his exceptional times.
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 03/20/2003
ISBN: 9780306812224
Pages: 416
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.16h x 6.06w x 1.12d
Review Citations: Library Journal 08/01/2003 pg. 143
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4.1 ★★★★★
Based on 16 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
A wonderful primer for those discovering the amazing world of generative AI
Format: Paperback, Format: Paperback
Somewhere in the past year, ChatGPT has gone from "cool, interesting, amusing" to a massively valuable work assistant capable of writing Python scripts, analysing data, and doing lots, lots, more. The key to this? The rapid evolution of OpenAI's GPT models and making my first forays into prompt engineering.
If I thought I was getting good, though, this book took me reminded me that I'm just scratching the surface. Halfway through the first chapter I was already furiously scribbling notes in the margins for what I could do better with my prompt writing and by the end of the text I felt like I had gotten a very good grounding - not just in GPTs specifically but in the bigger picture of how these hugely powerful tools were trained and came to maturity.
I imagine that few will argue with my assertion that there is lots of hyperbole and "noise" in the AI space right now which, as ever, makes it hard to pick out the signal from the noise. Which is precisely why I sought out an O'Reilly title and I'm very glad that I did.
Thorough, excellent, and I hope that this edition will be the first of many. As this rapidly maturing field scales and matures I think that prompt engineering will be an essential discipline to master. Pick up this text to get a good foothold on things.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2024
★★★★★ 4
Understanding AI prompts as a science
Format: Audiobook
Prompt engineering is the art and science of finding the right words to generate the right responses from artificial intelligence (AI). It's becoming a skill in-demand in today's workplaces. It's also becoming an essential skill for life. To understand prompt engineering, you must understand how AI tools understand their inputs. This book explains that to you in many forms.
It covers prompting as it intersects all the major AI disciplines, like general prompts (as in a ChatBot), fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). It also introduces how prompting intersects a couple of image-generation tools.
As a scientist, I appreciate the theoretical approach to these practical matters. Too many people are hacks at AI these days, and any technical understanding can rapidly advance an individual's effectiveness. Prompt engineering is often made fun of as a "soft" topic, but as this book demonstrates, it intersects all the major AI areas. Presumably less garbage in means less garbage out. This book shows how you can make that take place.
As typical for O'Reilly materials, this book appeals to people who desire an intermediate-to-advanced understanding of how AI works. It's not for the casual user. Anyone technical involved in professional knowledge generation using AI can benefit from understanding the dynamics "under the hood." It's a good, though perhaps not ground-breaking, textbook for those of us unable to take a class in the subject. Prompt engineering may be a soft topic to many, but books like this ground the field in the science that can make or break a digital or software product.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Great book
Format: Paperback
Great book! It is helpful as I work towards my Masters of Science in Applied Artificial Intelligence
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Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Comprehensive Guide with Practical Insights
Format: Paperback
This is a solid book for understanding the art and science of working with LLMs and other generative AI models. I always struggled with getting the output I was looking for, and wasn't sure how best to "ask" the models for what I wanted. This book did a great job of laying out the strategies and practical guidance to craft the prompts. There were a lot of tips and tricks, but the overall understanding and framework around prompt engineering has been super useful.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2024
★★★★★ 5
A must read!
Format: Paperback
Hands down, the best book on prompt engineering and implementing LLMs. Really enjoyed Michael and James deep dive. Whether you're technical or not, this book is foundational to a deeper understanding in how to properly explore and implement LLMs.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2024
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