The Country of the Blind is an exploration of the transition from sightedness to blindness through the personal narrative of Andrew Leland. His journey begins in a state of uncertainty, as his condition, retinitis pigmentosa, gradually diminishes his vision. Leland's world becomes increasingly constricted, like looking through a narrow tube, with a complete loss of sight looming on the horizon.
Despite the challenges, Leland's memoir is not just about adjusting to life's alterations; it's a quest to understand the richness of blindness as a distinct culture. He navigates the shifting dynamics within his family and confronts his evolving identity. The Country of the Blind is more than a memoir; it's a historical and cultural odyssey that delves into the experiences, languages, politics, and traditions associated with blindness.
This book represents Leland's commitment to not only endure the changes in his life but to embrace them. With a mix of introspection, humor, and intellectual vigor, The Country of the Blind offers readers a glimpse into a world often unexamined, providing valuable insights from a perspective that is enlightening and profound.
Andrew Liveris offers a masterclass in collaborative, forward-looking leadership in Leading Through Disruption. This work provides a revolutionary leadership paradigm, essential for fostering resilience and agility in today's ever-evolving world.
Readers will learn how to:
Create impactful metrics that benefit all societal members.
Engage collaboratively with a broad spectrum of stakeholders to develop actionable policies.
Harmonize the pursuit of long-term sustainability with immediate profitability.
Invest in and advocate for the strengthening of local communities.
Select team members who are committed to advancing global betterment.
Adapt swiftly and decisively to navigate uncertainties.
With insights drawn from four decades of global leadership across business, government, academia, and civic society, Andrew Liveris' book stands as an invaluable resource for any aspiring leader.
When Crack Was King offers an account of the crack cocaine era and a community's resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the rise and fall of the epidemic. Journalist Donovan X. Ramsey provides an exacting analysis beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan's war on drugs.
The book follows four individuals: Elgin Swift, who represents American industry and ambition and is the son of a crack-addicted father; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and sex worker; Kurt Schmoke, the longtime mayor of Baltimore and an advocate of decriminalization; and Shawn McCray, community activist and a founding member of Newark's most legendary group of drug traffickers.
With riveting research and the voices of survivors, this book is a crucial reevaluation of the era and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.
From the award-winning author comes a gripping account of one of the most scandalous chapters in modern Irish history, at once a propulsive work of true crime and an act of literary subversion.
Malcolm Macarthur was a well-known Dublin socialite and heir. Suave and urbane, he passed his days mingling with artists and aristocrats, reading philosophy, living a life of the mind. But by 1982, his inheritance had dwindled to almost nothing, a desperate threat to his lifestyle. Macarthur hastily conceived a He would commit bank robbery, of the kind that had become frightfully common in Dublin at the time. But his plan spun swiftly out of control, and he needlessly killed two innocent people. The ensuing manhunt, arrest, and conviction amounted to one of the most infamous political scandals in modern Irish history, contributing to the eventual collapse of a government.
Author Mark O'Connell spent countless hours in conversation with Macarthur—interviews that veered from confession to evasion. Through their tense exchanges and O’Connell’s independent reporting, a pair of narratives a riveting account of Macarthur's crimes and a study of the hazy line between truth and invention. We come to see not only the enormity of the murders but the damage that’s inflicted when a life is rendered into story.
One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century: the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser.
In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, bestselling author Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, instead, he kept all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.
For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals across Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who served as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.
In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Breitwieser never stole for money. He displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed with remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a number of audacious thefts. However, these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.
This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.
¿Qué nos produce turbación, desprecio o asco? ¿Por qué a veces el llanto nos desborda y nos deja exhaustos? ¿Qué nos lleva a culpar a los demás de lo que no somos capaces de resolver? ¿En qué momento nos convertimos en seres furibundos si perdemos el control?
En este libro sabremos por qué cedemos y en qué circunstancias a los deseos sexuales más intensos; cómo se proyectan en nuestro presente los traumas de la infancia; qué indica reír sin control si pasamos por una tragedia, un dolor físico severo o una gran tristeza; cuáles son las señales de una soledad profunda o un miedo sin límites que pueden derivar en una enfermedad crónica.
El lado B de las emociones es una obra provocadora porque nos confronta con lucidez y contundencia sobre aspectos que tememos, negamos o sencillamente odiamos. Eduardo Calixto llega hasta lo más hondo para hablarnos de nuestro enojo, el resentimiento, la vergüenza, el resultado: un libro con explicaciones impactantes sobre nuestras conductas más siniestras, la verdad sobre los actos perversos y, más que nada, las claves para conocer nuestros abismos, enfrentarlos y llenarlos de luz.
How to Stay Married is a shockingly candid, hilarious, voyeuristic, and inspiring account of one man's personal journey through hell and back when his wife's infidelity threatens their marriage. Written by Harrison Scott Key, winner of the 2016 Thurber Prize for American Humor, this memoir dives into the complexities of love and the challenges of maintaining a marriage.
From the host of the #1 podcast Sex with Emily, Emily Morse, comes a revolutionary new book that reframes our relationship to pleasure and teaches us how to have the best sex of our lives. Dr. Emily Morse has been dubbed "the Dr. Ruth of a new generation" (New York Times) and has helped millions of people navigate the world of sex and relationships. In Smart Sex, she condenses all she's learned as a doctor of human sexuality and offers a groundbreaking framework that will change the way you think about sex and pleasure.
In this essential book you'll uncover:
And so much more. Drawing from science, research, and lived experience, and written in a voice that's entertaining and inclusive, Smart Sex will help you radically improve your sex life, your confidence, and your relationships, including your relationship with yourself.
What an Owl Knows is a captivating exploration into the world of owls, penned by the acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman. This book delves into the rich biology and natural history of these enigmatic birds, unraveling the complex nature of their lives.
For thousands of years, owls have intrigued humans, symbolizing wisdom and mystery. Despite their long-standing presence in human culture, detailed scientific understanding of owls has only recently emerged. Ackerman sheds light on these discoveries, revealing the sophisticated behaviors and capabilities of owls, from their unique communication methods to their impressive hunting skills.
Throughout the book, Ackerman shares her own field observations and the latest research, offering insights into how owls communicate, hunt, court, and migrate. Her narrative is enriched with personal anecdotes and scientific findings, making What an Owl Knows a spellbinding read for anyone fascinated by the natural world.
This book is a must-read for those interested in the science of owls, providing an awe-inspiring journey through the lives of one of the world's most elusive bird species.
Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World is an urgent work for our times, as it delves into the apocalyptic consequences of climate change through the lens of a massive wildfire. The book takes readers on a riveting journey, exploring the past, present, and future of the relationship between humanity and fire's fierce energy.
In May 2016, the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta—Canada's oil industry hub—experienced a wildfire of colossal proportions. Known as the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina, this disaster turned neighborhoods into infernos and forced 88,000 people to evacuate in a single afternoon. John Vaillant presents this event not as an isolated occurrence, but a stark preview of what we must brace for in a world growing hotter and more flammable.
For hundreds of millennia, fire has played a pivotal role in human evolution, shaping culture, civilization, and perhaps even our brains. It has been essential for cooking food, defending and heating our homes, and powering the economy. Yet, this volatile element has always posed a threat to elude our control. Today, with the intensification of climate change, we are witnessing fire's destructive power on an unprecedented scale.
Vaillant masterfully weaves together the intertwined histories of North America's oil industry and the emergence of climate science, examining the alarming destruction caused by modern forest fires, and offering a window into lives irrevocably altered by these disasters.
Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World is not just a narrative of a natural disaster; it is a compelling account of an ever-evolving challenge, a testament to human resilience and ingenuity, and a crucial call to action in our new century of fire, which is only just beginning.
Pageboy: A Memoir is a candid and transformative journey of Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. From the brink of self-discovery in a queer bar before the world premiere of Juno, through the whirlwind of Hollywood's expectations, to the pressures of performing that nearly suffocated him, Elliot Page's memoir is a tale of defiance, strength, and joy.
Elliot's story delves into the intimate aspects of sex, love, trauma, and the challenges of navigating a life in the spotlight. As he grapples with his identity and the societal pressures to conform to a binary, Elliot's narrative is both an ode to self-realization and a powerful exploration of what it means to break free from the expectations of others. Pageboy reveals the behind-the-scenes details of a life lived in the public eye and the personal interrogations that lead to a celebration of true self.
Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn't have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are.
Through evocative illustrations and sharp humor, Bell examines how The Talk shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood. While coming of age in Los Angeles—and finding a voice through cartooning—Bell becomes painfully aware of being regarded as dangerous by white teachers, neighbors, and police officers and thus of his mortality. Drawing attention to the brutal murders of African Americans and showcasing revealing insights and cartoons along the way, he brings us up to the moment of reckoning when people took to the streets protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And now Bell must decide whether he and his own six-year-old son are ready to have The Talk.
Bestselling journalist Antony Loewenstein uncovers the widespread commercialisation and brutal deployment globally of Israel’s occupation-enforcing technologies.
For more than 50 years, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an ‘enemy’ population, the Palestinians. It’s here that they have perfected the architecture of control, using the occupied Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world.
The Palestine Laboratory shows in depth and for the first time how Israel has become a leader in developing spying technology and defence hardware that fuels some of the globe’s most brutal conflicts — from the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos’s and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, and the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas, to the drones being used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown.
In a global investigation that uncovers secret documents, based on revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting, Antony Loewenstein shows how, as ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate tools for despots and democracies.
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. This revelatory new portrait offers an intimate view of the preacher and activist who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
Eig casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. He reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death.
Following MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation's most mourned martyr.
In this landmark biography, Eig presents an MLK who was a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements. His demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. The book also includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.
Samantha Irby invites us to share in the gory particulars of her real life, all that festers behind the glitter and glam.
The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City. Finally, she has made it. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to keep her life together as she always had.
Her teeth are poisoning her from inside her mouth, and her diarrhea is back. She gets turned away from a restaurant for wearing ugly clothes, she goes to therapy and tries out Lexapro, gets healed with Reiki, explores the power of crystals, and becomes addicted to QVC. Making light of herself as she takes us on an outrageously funny tour of all the details that make up a true portrait of her life, Irby is once again the relatable, uproarious tonic we all need.
Our Migrant Souls is a defining exploration of the Latino identity in the United States by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Héctor Tobar. The term "Latino" is one of the most rapidly growing but loosely defined major race categories in the country.
Composed as a direct address to young people who identify or are classified as "Latino," this book stands as the first account of the historical and social forces shaping Latino identity. Tobar examines the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media, and pop culture, decoding the meaning of "Latino" as a racial and ethnic identity in contemporary America.
Our Migrant Souls gives voice to the frustrations and aspirations of young Latinos who have witnessed the transformation of Latinidad into negative stereotypes and have faced insult and division. Tobar shares his experiences as a journalist, novelist, mentor, leader, and educator, intertwining his personal narrative and his parents' migration from Guatemala with his journey across the country to uncover a narrative that is expansive, inspiring, and alive.
Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work.
In Grealy’s critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn’t Lucy’s life or Ann’s life, but the parts of their lives they shared.
This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined... and what happens when one is left behind.
This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty, and being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.
Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food is an eye-opening investigation into the science, economics, history, and production of ultra-processed food, also known as UPF. Medical doctor and broadcaster Chris van Tulleken takes us through the hard facts about our food intake and its links to various diseases such as metabolic disease, depression, inflammation, anxiety, and cancer. He also discusses the environmental damage caused by the production, distribution, and disposal of UPF.
Van Tulleken reframes the conversation around healthy eating by providing both shocking and empathetic insights into our eating habits. He delves into the concept of the 'third age of eating' characterized by the abundance of ultra-processed eating options and provides guidance on making informed choices amidst this landscape. This book is not just about diet trends or individual willpower; it's about our right to know what we eat and its effects on our bodies and our environment.
Filmlandia! takes you on a captivating journey through the cinematic landscape of the Pacific Northwest. From the eerie mysteries of Twin Peaks to the enchanting tales of Twilight, and the quirky humor of Portlandia!, this book highlights over 200 film and television productions that have been crafted and centered in Seattle, Portland, and the greater Pacific Northwest.
David Schmader, a renowned culture writer, has meticulously researched and curated this collection, offering hilarious and insightful synopses along with intriguing behind-the-scenes facts and trivia. Discover regional scenic highlights and delve into the minds of filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Lynn Shelton. Explore the television shows that have shaped perceptions of the region, such as Shrill and Portlandia!.
Whether you're a cinephile or simply someone who cherishes the vibrant culture of the Pacific Northwest, Filmlandia! is a must-have guide that celebrates the area's rich film culture in a visually arresting and compelling manner.
Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma is a passionate, provocative, and blisteringly smart interrogation of how we experience art in the age of #MeToo. Author Claire Dederer poses the critical question: What do we do with the art of monstrous men? Can we still love the work of Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, Hemingway and Picasso? Should we love it? Does genius deserve special dispensation?
Dederer explores the concept of monstrousness in men and women artists alike, prompting readers to examine their own responses and behavior. With a focus on the tumultuous relationship between art, the artist's biography, and the audience, this book delves deep into one of our most pressing cultural conversations. It is a work that is morally wise, deeply considered, and sharply written, urging both the fan and the reader to engage with these complex issues.
A dazzlingly inventive, deeply moving, intellectually bracing exploration of pain and beauty, private memory and public monument, art and complexity in contemporary Black life.
Christina Sharpe begins by writing about her mother and grandmother in Ordinary Notes. This singular achievement explores profound questions about loss, and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. A series of 248 brief and urgent notes gather meaning as we read them, skillfully weaving artifacts from the past—public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal—with present-day realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence.
Themes and tones echo throughout the pages, sometimes about life, art, language, beauty, memory; sometimes about history, photography, and literature—but always attending, with exquisite care, to the ordinary-extraordinary dimensions of Black life.
At the heart of Ordinary Notes is the indelible presence of the author's mother, Ida Wright Sharpe. Sharpe writes, "I learned to see in my mother's house," and "My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of words." Using these gifts and other ways of seeing, she steadily summons a chorus of voices and experiences to become present on the page. She articulates and follows an aesthetic of "beauty as a method," collects entries from a community of thinkers towards a "Dictionary of Untranslatable Blackness," and rigorously examines sites of memory and memorial. And in the process, she forges a new literary form, as multivalent as the ways of Black being it traces.
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History offers a sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.
Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis, he reveals that:
Blackhawk's retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project discovers a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, and love: by tuning in to the five senses.
For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she'd been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. She'd spent so much time stuck in her head that she'd allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.
Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives—and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.
Acclaimed author Jonathan Rosen's haunting investigation of the forces that led his closest childhood friend, Michael Laudor, from the heights of brilliant promise to the forensic psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. The Best Minds explores the ways in which we understand—and fail to understand—mental illness.
When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both children of college professors, the boys were best friends and keen competitors, and, when they both got into Yale University, seemed set to join the American meritocratic elite.
Michael blazed through college in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. But all wasn't as it seemed. One day, Jonathan received the call: Michael had suffered a serious psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital.
Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Michael was still in the hospital when he learned he'd been accepted to Yale Law School, and still battling delusions when he decided to trade his halfway house for the top law school in the country. He not only managed to graduate, but after his extraordinary story was featured in The New York Times, sold a memoir for a large sum. Ron Howard bought film rights, completing the dream for Michael and his tirelessly supportive girlfriend Carrie. But then Michael, in the grip of an unshakeable paranoid fantasy, stabbed Carrie to death with a kitchen knife and became a front-page story of an entirely different sort.
The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen's brilliant and heartbreaking account of an American tragedy. It is a story about the bonds of family, friendship, and community; the promise of intellectual achievement; and the lure of utopian solutions. Tender, funny, and harrowing by turns, at times almost unbearably sad, The Best Minds is an extreme version of a story that is tragically familiar to all too many. In the hands of a writer of Jonathan Rosen's gifts and dedication, its significance will echo widely.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wager is a riveting story of shipwreck, survival, and the wild extremes of human behavior. David Grann delivers a narrative with the suspense of a thriller, revealing the profound implications of the events aboard the Wager, and challenging the very notion of empire.
On January 28, 1742, a makeshift vessel stumbled upon the coast of Brazil with thirty severely weakened men. These survivors of the British ship, the Wager, recounted an incredible ordeal. Dispatched from England in 1740 during a war with Spain, the Wager was in pursuit of a Spanish galleon laden with treasure when disaster struck off the Patagonian coast.
Marooned and facing death, the crew constructed a crude boat and embarked on an extraordinary 2500-mile voyage across tempestuous waters, only to be branded as heroes upon their return. However, a subsequent arrival of three castaways in Chile unveiled a starkly contrasting narrative of mutiny and betrayal. As the Admiralty held a court martial to uncover the truth, the account of anarchy, conflict, and murder emerged, leading to a verdict that could mean the gallows for the accused.
Grann's masterful recounting of this historical saga echoes the literary achievements of Patrick O’Brian and the gripping survival tales akin to The Endurance. The Wager is a testament to the extremes of human conduct in the face of adversity, crafted by one of today's most exceptional nonfiction storytellers.
A historian explores the complicated relationship between womanhood and motherhood in this timely, refreshingly open-hearted study of the choices women make and the cards they’re dealt.
In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others—the vast majority, then and now—who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone.
Drawing on deep research and her own experience as a woman without children, historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington shows that many of the reasons women are not having children today are ones they share with women in the past: a lack of support, their jobs or finances, environmental concerns, infertility, and the desire to live different kinds of lives. Understanding this history—how normal it has always been to not have children, and how hard society has worked to make it seem abnormal—is key, she writes, to rebuilding kinship between mothers and non-mothers, and to building a better world for us all.
The Anxious Achiever is a book with a mission: to normalize anxiety and leadership. As leadership expert and self-proclaimed anxious achiever Morra Aarons-Mele argues, anxiety is built into the very nature of leadership. It can—and should—be harnessed into a force for good. Inspired by the popular podcast of the same name, The Anxious Achiever is filled with personal stories, research-based insights into mental health, and lots of practical advice.
You'll learn how to:
Figure out your own anxiety profile so that you can recognize and avoid common thought traps and triggers
Confront bad habits and unhealthy coping mechanisms
Resist perfectionism, manage social anxiety, and set boundaries to prevent burnout
Deal with feedback, criticism, and impostor syndrome
Model—and communicate—healthy behavior as a leader
Whether you're experiencing anxiety for the first time or have been battling it for years, The Anxious Achiever will help you turn your stress and worries into a source of strength for yourself, your career, and the people you lead.
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself. The book begins with one woman's personal heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she's known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy. You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives.
It is a story about a mother's fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman's love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new and beautiful.
Arrangements in Blue is a poignant memoir that delves into the life of poet Amy Key, who, in her forties, embarks on an exploration of living without romantic love. With expectations of love shaped by Joni Mitchell's album Blue, Key reflects on a life that has unfolded differently than she imagined.
Key's journey is one of self-discovery, as she builds a home, travels solo, contemplates motherhood, and learns to recognize her personal milestones. She uncovers the often overlooked forms of connection and care, while also confronting the challenging emotions of loneliness, envy, grief, and failure.
This memoir is not just Key's story but an invitation to live and love more honestly, honoring the life one leads completely by oneself. Arrangements in Blue is a testament to the expansive potential of self-friendship and the importance of candidly embracing the full spectrum of human experience.
A Fever In The Heartland by Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author Timothy Egan presents a historical thriller that delves into the riveting story of the Ku Klux Klan's rise to power in the 1920s. At the heart of this rise was a cunning con man named D.C. Stephenson, whose magnetic presence and ever-changing life story captivated many.
In just two years upon his arrival in Indiana, Stephenson climbed the ranks to become the Grand Dragon of the state, establishing a strategy that would bring the Klan out of the shadows. Their hateful message, targeting Blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants, was endorsed by local churches, spread at family picnics, and celebrated in towns across the Heartland and the West. With judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors, and senators openly supporting the Klan, Stephenson's influence seemed unshakeable.
However, at the peak of his power, it was the courage of a seemingly powerless woman, Madge Oberholtzer, that would expose his heinous acts. Her deathbed testimony would become the catalyst for the Klan's downfall. A Fever In The Heartland is not only a propulsive drama but also a poignant reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.
From the bestselling author of All You Can Ever Know comes a searing memoir of family, class, and grief—a daughter's search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she's lost. In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them.
Nicole Chung couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in—where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations—looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets.
When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of precarity and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his early death. And then the unthinkable happens—less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID-19 descends upon the world.
Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another—and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in American society.
As parents, we are always searching for ways to raise our children smarter, better and happier. In The Steps: 12 Secrets to Raising Happy and Successful Kids, authors and child development experts Andrew Watson, MD and Charles Watson, MD, Ph.D draw on decades of experience helping countless of struggling new parents to write an engaging translation of the best research in the field of positive parenting and child development. Whether you are an expecting mother, new Mom or new Dad, or you are the experienced parent of a difficult teenager, you will find comfort and encouragement in this enlightening anecdote.
While investigating the education system for an article, a journalist named Estela discovers The Steps, Dr. Michael Jansen’s innovative parenting protocol based on the recent advances of neuroscience and child psychology. The Steps targets the development of communication and language of the child, early reading, creativity, self-control, positive discipline, grit, and values, among other things, to give the right tools to promote the cognitive, psycho-motor, and affective skills of the baby, the child and the adolescent, producing highly successful adults with above-average abilities.
Dr. Michael Jansen decides to share with Estela the 12 Steps from the protocol. In the meantime, she finds out about her own unplanned pregnancy. What better time to find out if The Steps really work?
Although Estela and Dr. Jansen are fictional characters in this book, the child development research discussed in the book and its real-world value to parents are factual. The 12 Steps contain vital parenting tips that any Mom or Dad can use to:
Increase the probability of your children being well-adjusted, self-confident and above average in school and social situations
Teach children to read and to love books at any early age and to advance faster than their peers
How to raise children with values and morals
Understand how babies learn and how positive reinforcement accelerates school success
How to encourage creativity for kids
Feel more confident in yourselves as parents and ensure that you are ready for your newborn baby
Set goals for children that guarantee success and teach your child the grit needed to achieve them
Deal with difficult parenting issues, like ADHD, lack of focus, antisocial behavior and low self-esteem
Above Ground is a remarkable poetry collection from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed. This vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated Smith's sense of the world.
The poems interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. They revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of children, as they experience it for the first time. The poems meditate on what it means to raise a family amidst constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body.
Smith's lyrical, narrative poems invite the reader on a journey through the early years of his children's lives and the changing world in which they are growing up—a world that we all are a part of. Above Ground is a breathtaking collection that follows Smith's first award-winning book of poetry, Counting Descent.
In Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Dr. Peter Attia offers a new perspective on living a better and longer life by challenging conventional medical thinking on aging and chronic disease prevention. Dr. Attia, a visionary physician and longevity expert, provides an operating manual for longevity, drawing on the latest science to introduce innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.
Mainstream medicine, despite its successes, has struggled to combat aging-related diseases like heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and type 2 diabetes, often providing treatment too late. Dr. Attia advocates for a personalized, proactive strategy for longevity, emphasizing the importance of taking action now rather than waiting. This strategic and tactical approach aims to extend lifespan while improving physical, cognitive, and emotional health.
With the right approach, it's possible to outlive our genetic predispositions and enjoy better health with each passing decade.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. “Urgent and accessible . . . Its moral force is a gut punch.”—The New Yorker
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.
Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.
Maui Revealed is the finest guidebook ever written for Maui. Now you can plan your best vacation—ever. This all-new 12th edition is a candid, humorous guide to everything there is to see and do on the island. Best-selling author and longtime Hawai‘i resident, Andrew Doughty, unlocks the secrets of an island so lush and diverse that many visitors never realize all that it has to offer. Explore with him as he reveals breathtaking trails, secluded beaches, pristine reefs, delicious places to eat, colorful craters, hidden waterfalls, and so much more.
Every restaurant, activity provider, business, and resort is reviewed personally and anonymously. This book and a rental car are all you need to discover what makes Maui so exciting.
Maui Revealed covers it all—from the wind-swept top of Haleakala to the sparkling underwater reefs. This is the best investment you can make for your Maui vacation. Whether you’re a first-time visitor or a longtime kama‘aina, you’ll find out more about Maui from this book than from any other source. Discover the island of your dreams with Maui Revealed.
Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, thought crimes are punishable by law, and your own feelings can be used against you. Where perfumers create customized fragrances to perfectly suit your emotions, and social media titans bypass your conscious mind to hook you to their products. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.
Neuroscience has already made all of the above possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the universal controller for all of our interactions with technology. This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can severely threaten our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination. Companies, governments, and militaries are all in: from contemplative neuroscience to consumer-based EEG technology, there have never been more ways to hack and track our brains.
The Battle for Your Brain by Nita A. Farahany dives deeply into the promises and perils of the coming dawn of brain access and alteration. Written by one of the world's foremost experts on neuroscience as it intersects with law and ethics, this highly original book offers a pathway forward to navigate the complex ethical dilemmas that neurotechnology presents, which will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.
In her first book, How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the "attention economy" to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don't have time to spend? In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently.
Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism. This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time—inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales—that can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries.
Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility. Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it—the way we experience time itself—and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can "save" time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.
Every family has a story. For some of us, our family of origin is a solid foundation that feeds our confidence and helps us navigate life’s challenges. For others, it’s a source of pain, hurt, and conflict that can feel like a lifelong burden.
In this empowering guide, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers clear advice for identifying dysfunctional family patterns and choosing the best path to breaking the cycle and moving forward.
Covering topics ranging from the trauma of emotional neglect, to the legacy of addicted or absent parents, to mental health struggles in siblings and other relatives, and more, this clear and compassionate guide will help you take control of your own life—and honor the person you truly are.
Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to an enormously successful product launch in eleven months. But they are the exception. Consider how London’s Crossrail project delivered five years late and billions overbudget. More modest endeavours, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why? Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg. In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors that lead projects to fail, and the research-based principles that will make yours succeed:
- Understand your odds. If you don't know them, you won't win.
- Plan slow, act fast. Getting to the action quick feels right. But it's wrong.
- Think right to left. Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there.
- Find your Lego. Big is best built from small.
- Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they can't, so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can.
Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House to the making of the latest Pixar blockbusters, How Big Things Get Done reveals how to get any ambitious project done — on time and on budget.
A haunting, unforgettable memoir about a beloved younger sister and the painful memory of her murder, from one of Mexico's greatest living writers.
Can you enjoy yourself while you are in pain? The question, which is not new, arises over and over again during that eternity that is mourning.
In the early hours of July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive ex-boyfriend. A life full of promise and hope, cut tragically short, Liliana's story instead became subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of domestic violence. With Liliana's case file abandoned by a corrupt criminal justice system, her family, including her older sister Cristina, was forced to process their grief and guilt in private, without any hope for justice.
In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: that of a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. It traces the story of her childhood, her early romance with a handsome--but possessive and short-tempered--man, through the exhilarating weeks leading up to that fateful July morning, a summer when Liliana loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.
Using her remarkable talents as a scholar, novelist, and poet, Cristina Rivera Garza returns to Mexico after decades of living in the United States to collect and curate evidence--handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, architectural blueprints--in order to render and understand a life beyond the crime itself. Tracing the full arc of their childhood and adolescence in central Mexico, through the painful and confusing years after Liliana's death, Rivera Garza confronts the trauma of losing her sister, and examines from multiple angles how this tragedy continues to shape who she is--and what she fights for--today.
Enseñar a Hablar a un Monstruo es una indagación literaria sobre el gran misterio que nos hace humanos: el lenguaje. Es el primer libro de no ficción del novelista, traductor y profesor de linguística José C. Vales. Este ensayo narrativo y literario nos propone un viaje al origen del lenguaje, la evolución de las lenguas y el milagro de la escritura.
Armado con múltiples preguntas y reflexiones, el autor plantea las diferentes teorías que explican por qué estamos dotados de lenguaje, cómo evoluciona y de qué manera empieza a transcribirse. El texto es una lectura deliciosa, amena, interesante y sugerente respecto a un tema universal, explicado con afán didáctico y libre de tecnicismos.
Con el estilo que caracteriza a José C. Vales, repleto de lucidez, sabiduría y siempre con su toque irónico pero amable, descubriremos el fascinante mundo de la comunicación humana.
A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life.
"Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know."
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.
In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.
Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.
'Come Up for Air' is a practical guide offering a new blueprint for teams to become more productive while avoiding the burnout associated with the old hustle culture. Author Nick Sonnenberg, through his experience in building a leading efficiency consulting business, introduces the CPR® Business Efficiency Framework. This framework is a system designed to help leaders, managers, and teams use the right tools effectively to enhance performance and reduce the stress of being overwhelmed.
The book promises to help teams gain an extra full business day per week in productivity, reduce stress, and improve company culture. Sonnenberg shares empirical strategies and practical examples, including case studies and templates, to create immediate time-saving wins and implement simple hacks to stop wasting time on unnecessary work. Readers will learn how to eliminate inefficiencies, optimize email with the R.A.D. System, and stop time loss in meetings with four proven techniques.
Red Memory: The Afterlives Of China's Cultural Revolution explores the lasting impact of one of the most tumultuous periods in China's history. Author Tania Branigan delves into personal stories and historical accounts to shed light on how the Cultural Revolution has continued to shape China and its people long after its official end.
The book offers a nuanced look at the complex ways in which the events from that time are remembered, forgotten, and reinterpreted by those who lived through it, as well as the younger generations. It's a profound examination of memory, identity, and the power of history in contemporary society.
Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day and then ages out. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable.
Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn't, he has learned that being an artist isn't about your specific output; it's about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone's life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.
The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distils the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments - and lifetimes - of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as “his” slave.
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.
But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher.
With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.