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Unthinkable: Trauma, truth, and the trials of american democracy
By Jamie Raskin. 2022
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. In this searing memoir, Congressman Jamie Raskin tells the story of the forty-five days…
at the start of 2021 that permanently changed his life—and his family's—as he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nation's Capitol, and led the impeachment effort to hold President Trump accountable for inciting the political violence. On December 31, 2020, Tommy Raskin, the only son of Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, tragically took his own life after a long struggle with depression. Seven days later on January 6, Congressman Raskin returned to Congress to help certify the 2020 Presidential election results, when violent insurrectionists led by right wing extremist groups stormed the U.S. Capitol hoping to hand four more years of power to President Donald Trump. As our reeling nation mourned the deaths of numerous people and lamented the injuries of more than 140 police officers hurt in the attack, Congressman Raskin, a Constitutional law professor, was called upon to put aside his overwhelming grief—both personal and professional—and lead the impeachment effort against President Trump for inciting the violence. Together this nine-member team of House impeachment managers riveted a nation still in anguish, putting on an unprecedented Senate trial that produced the most bipartisan Presidential impeachment vote in American history. Now for the first time, Congressman Raskin discusses this unimaginable convergence of personal and public trauma, detailing how the painful loss of his son and the power of Tommy's convictions fueled the Congressman's work in the aftermath of modern democracy's darkest day. Going inside Congress on January 6, he recounts the horror of that day, a day that he and other Democrats had spent months preparing for under the correct assumption that they would encounter an attempted electoral coup—not against a President but for one. And yet, on January 6, he faced the one thing he had failed to anticipate: mass political violence designed to block Biden's election. With an inside account of leading the team prosecuting President Trump in the Senate, Congressman Raskin shares never before told stories of just how close we came to losing our democracy that fateful day and lays out the methodical prosecution that convinced Democrats and Republicans alike of Trump's responsibility for inciting insurrectionary violence against our government. Through it all, he reckons with the loss of his brilliant, remarkable son, a Harvard Law student whose values and memory continually inspired the Congressman to confront the dark impulses unleashed by Donald Trump. At turns, a moving story of a father coping with his pain and a revealing examination of holding President Trump accountable for the violence he fomented, this book is a vital reminder of the ongoing struggle for the soul of American democracy and the perseverance that our Constitution demands from us all
The hare with amber eyes: a hidden inheritance
By Edmund De Waal, Edmund De Waal. 2011
British ceramic artist relates tracing his family's history through the ownership of a collection of netsuke, ornamental Japanese carvings, which…
he inherited in 1994. Describes the wealthy Ephrussi clan's lives in Vienna and Paris and their origins as Jewish merchants from Odessa, Russia. 2010
Letters of Note: Grief
By Shaun Usher. 2022
An immensely moving collection of letters on the theme of Grief, curated by the founder of the globally popular Letters…
of Note website.The first volume in the bestselling Letters of Note series was a collection of hundreds of the world's most entertaining, inspiring, and unusual letters, based on the seismically popular website of the same name--an online museum of correspondence visited by over 70 million people. From Virginia Woolf's heartbreaking suicide letter, to Queen Elizabeth II's recipe for drop scones sent to President Eisenhower; from the first recorded use of the expression 'OMG' in a letter to Winston Churchill, to Gandhi's appeal for calm to Hitler; and from Iggy Pop's beautiful letter of advice to a troubled young fan, to Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable job application letter. Now, the curator of Letters of Note, Shaun Usher, gives us wonderful new volumes featuring letters organized around a universal theme. In this volume, Shaun Usher turns to the theme of grief. Contributors to be confirmed.
Never say die: the myth and marketing of the new old age
By Susan Jacoby. 2011
Social critic and author of The Age of American Unreason (DB 66150) paints a pessimistic, yet realistic, overview of old…
age. Combines social, economic, and historical analyses as well as personal experience to portray the issues--with special attention to Alzheimer's disease--that aging baby boomers will encounter. 2011
Death (Journey of Life Ser.)
By Sarah Levete. 2010
Discusses customs surrounding death that are practiced by six major religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Examines issues…
being debated about these customs, such as whether environmental concerns should outweigh the Hindu funeral pyre tradition. For grades 3-6. 2010
Blue nights
By Joan Didion. 2011
Didion, who wrote about her husband John Gregory Dunne's death in The Year of Magical Thinking (DB 61740), here focuses…
on her adopted daughter Quintana Roo, who died at age thirty-nine in 2005. Didion reflects on Quintana's childhood, her own role as a mother, adoption issues, and aging. Bestseller. 2011
Terezín: voices from the Holocaust
By Ruth Thomson. 2011
Uses extracts from diaries and memoirs to describe Terezín, Czechoslovakia, in 1941-1945, when the Nazis turned the small town into…
a transit camp for imprisoning Jewish people before sending them to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Relates the prisoners' feelings and their observations about camp events. For grades 5-8. 2011
The year of goodbyes: a true story of friendship, family and farewells
By Debbie Levy. 2010
Inspired by her mother Jutta's poesiealbum--an album of poems written by friends--and Jutta's diary, Levy presents a blank-verse recollection of…
the rapidly increased danger for Jews in Nazi Germany, which culminated in Jutta's family moving to the United States before World War II. For grades 5-8. 2010
My stolen son: the Nick Markowitz story
By Jenna Glatzer, Susan Markowitz. 2010
Describes the 2000 murder of the author's fifteen-year-old son Nick. Explains that the killers were young men who had a…
drug dispute with Nick's half-brother. Discusses Nick's life and the nine-year search for Jesse James Hollywood, who fled the country after arranging Nick's death. Strong language and some violence. 2010
The faith club: a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew-- three women search for understanding
By Priscilla Warner, Suzanne Oliver, Ranya Idliby. 2007
After the 9/11 attacks three American women--one Jewish, one Christian, and one Muslim--decided to collaborate on an interfaith children's book…
to show the similarities among their religions. They discovered that their own misunderstandings had to be addressed first, leading to candid dialogue as their faith club sought common ground. 2006
Unorthodox: the scandalous rejection of my Hasidic roots
By Deborah Feldman. 2012
Author, born in the 1980s, describes being raised by her Hasidic grandparents in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood after her mother left…
her developmentally disabled father. Discusses being an outcast and her arranged marriage, limited access to reading material, and lack of educational or employment opportunities. Bestseller. 2012
How they croaked: the awful ends of the awfully famous
By Georgia Bragg, Kevin O'Malley. 2011
Guide to the deaths of nineteen notable people begins with King Tut, who died of malaria. Also covers King Henry…
VIII, whose corpse exploded; George Washington; Marie Curie, who literally worked to death; and Albert Einstein. Includes facts, oddities, and resources. Some violence. For grades 5-8 and older readers. 2011
Tiny beautiful things: advice on love and life from Dear Sugar
By Cheryl Strayed. 2012
Author of the bestselling Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (DB 74646) compiles selections from her…
advice column published in the online magazine The Rumpus. Addresses pain-medication addiction, dead-beat dads, and relationship woes. Strong language and some explicit descriptions of sex. Bestseller. 2012
The Jewish festivals: a guide to their history and observance
By Hayyim Schauss, Ḥayim Shoys. 1996
Historical background for Jewish festivals and feast days. Uses details of the celebrations to help explain the basic precepts of…
Judaism. Describes the biblical origin of observances and traces the ways they have evolved. Translated from Yiddish by Samuel Jaffe with a 1996 foreword by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner. 1938
How to Lose Everything: A Memoir
By Christa Couture. 2020
Locations of Grief: An Emotional Geography
By Catherine Owen, Jenna Butler, Catherine Graham. 2020
Exploring the landscapes of death and grief, this collection takes the reader through a series of essays, drawn together from…
twenty-four Canadian writers that reach across different ages, ethnicities and gender identities as they share their thoughts, struggles and journeys relating to death. Be it the meditation on the loss of a beloved dog who once solaced a departed parent, the tragic suicide of a stranger or the deep pain of losing a brother, Locations of Grief is defined by its range of essays exploring all the facets of mourning, and how the places in our lives can be irreversibly changed by the lingering presence of death.
On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times
By Michael Ignatieff. 2021
Timely and profound philosophical meditations on how great figures in history, literature, music, and art searched for solace while facing…
tragedies and crises, from the internationally renowned historian of ideas and Booker Prize-finalist Michael Ignatieff.When someone we love dies, when we suffer loss or defeat, when catastrophe strikes--war, famine, pandemic--we go in search of consolation. Once the province of priests and philosophers, the language of consolation has largely vanished from our modern vocabulary, and the places where it was offered, houses of religion, are often empty. Rejecting the solace of ancient religious texts, humanity since the sixteenth century has increasingly placed its faith in science, ideology, and the therapeutic.How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of lapidary meditations on writers, artists, musicians, and their works--from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Primo Levi--esteemed writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience. Recreating the moments when great figures found the courage to confront their fate and the determination to continue unafraid, On Consolation takes those stories into the present, movingly contending that we can revive these traditions of consolation to meet the anguish and uncertainties of our precarious twenty-first century.
The Pope and I: how the lifelong friendship between a Polish Jew and John Paul II advanced the cause of Jewish-Christian relations
By Jerzy Kluger, Gianfranco Di Simone. 2012
Autobiography recounts the author's childhood friendship in 1920s Poland with Karol Wojtyla (1920-2005), who became Pope John Paul II in…
1978. Kluger, a Jew, describes surviving World War II and reuniting with his friend after almost thirty years. Translated from Polish. 2011
Wave
By Sonali Deraniyagala. 2013
British economist describes the events of December 26, 2004, when she lost her parents, husband, and two young sons to…
a tsunami while visiting her native country of Sri Lanka. Discusses her years of continual recovery and grief from the tragedy. Some strong language. Bestseller. 2013
Mortality
By Christopher Hitchens. 2012
Hitchens (1949-2011), author of Why Orwell Matters (DB 74336), chronicles his battle with esophageal cancer, which began with his diagnosis…
in June 2010. Describes accepting the inevitability of death and the questions of faith he dealt with as an avowed atheist. Includes afterword by Hitchens's widow Carol Blue. Bestseller. 2012