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DAISY audio (CD), DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
General non-fiction, Travel and geography, United States history
Human-narrated audio
"A casually wondrous experience; it made me feel like the city was unfolding beneath my feet.&” —Jia Tolentino, author of…
Trick Mirror In place-names lie stories. That&’s the truth that animates this fascinating journey through the names of New York City&’s streets and parks, boroughs and bridges, playgrounds and neighborhoods. Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on the city&’s map. He excavates the roots of many names, from Brooklyn to Harlem, that have gained iconic meaning worldwide. He interviews the last living speakers of Lenape, visits the harbor&’s forgotten islands, lingers on street corners named for ballplayers and saints, and meets linguists who study the estimated eight hundred languages now spoken in New York. As recent arrivals continue to find new ways to make New York&’s neighborhoods their own, the names that stick to the city&’s streets function not only as portals to explore the past but also as a means to reimagine what is possible now
DAISY audio (CD), DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Science and technology, Travel and geography
Human-narrated audio
Recently recovered from his epic bicycle journey that took him from the Delaware shore to the Oregon coast, distinguished climate…
scientist David Goodrich sets out on his bike again to traverse the Western Interior Seaway—an ancient ocean that once spread across half of North America. When the waters cleared a geologic age ago, what was left behind was vast flat prairie, otherworldly rock formations, and oil shale deposits. As Goodrich journeys through the Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Park and across the prairies of the upper Midwest and Canada, we get a raw and ground-level view of where the tar sands and oil reserves are being opened up at an incredible and unprecedented pace. Extraordinary and unregulated, this "black goldrush" is boom and bust in every sense. In a manner reminiscent of John McPhee and Rachel Carson, combined with Goodrich's wry self-deprecation and scientific expertise, A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean is a galvanizing and adventure-filled listen that gets to the heart of drilling on our continent
DAISY audio (CD), DAISY audio (Direct to player), DAISY audio (Zip)
Science and technology, Environment, Adventure and exploration
Human-narrated audio
Concern about the climate crisis is widespread as humans struggle to navigate life in uncertain times. From the vantage of…
a schooner full of artists on an adventure in the high Arctic, biologist Lynne Quarmby explains the science that convinced her of an urgent need to act on climate change and recounts how this knowledge - and the fear and panic it elicited - plunged her into unsustainable action, ending in arrests, lawsuits, and a failed electoral campaign on behalf of the Green Party of Canada. Watermelon Snow weaves memoir, microbiology, and artistic antics together with descriptions of a sublime Arctic landscape. At the top of the warming world, Quarmby struggles with burnout and grief while an aerial artist twirls high in the ship's rigging, bearded seals sing mournfully, polar bears prowl, and glaciers crumble into the sea. In a compelling narrative, sorrow and fear are balanced by beauty and wonder. The author's journey back from a life out of balance includes excursions into evolutionary history where her discoveries reveal the heart of human existence. The climate realities are as dark as the Arctic winter, yet this is a book of lightness and generosity. Quarmby's voice, intimate and original, illuminates the science while offering a reminder that much about the human experience is beyond reason. Inspiring and deeply personal, Watermelon Snow is the story of one scientist's rediscovery of what it means to live a good life at a time of increasing desperation about the future