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Showing 61 - 80 of 20449 items
By Joanna Pocock. 2019
An evocative blend of narrative nonfiction, personal memoir, nature writing, and reportage in the style of Barry Lopez and Annie…
Dillard, Surrender explores the changing landscape of the American West and the outsider eco-cultures that have taken root in an era of increasing climatic disruption.The mid-life crisis handed to Joanna Pocock came in a box marked with one simple word: Montana. With their seven-year-old daughter in tow, Joanna and her husband packed up their house, filled one suitcase each, and left the rhythms of life in England behind for their great adventure in the American West.Blending personal memoir with insightful reportage and vivid nature writing, award-winning writer Joanna Pocock investigates the changing landscape of the West and the radical environmental movements that have taken root in the Mountain States. She witnesses the annual tribal bison hunt near Yellowstone Park, where she meets a scavenger community honing ancestral skills. She joins Finisia Medrano, a transgender rewilder who for many years has been living on the “hoop,” following her food source by seasonal migration. She attends the Ecosex Convergence — an annual gathering of people who place their relationship with the earth above everything else — and attends a workshop led by Reverend Teri Ciacchi, a sexologist, priestess of Aphrodite, and holistic spiritual healer in the Living Love Revolution Church.In the style of Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, and Eula Biss, Surrender explores the outsider cultures oblossoming in the new American West in an era of increasing climatic disruption, rising sea levels, animal extinctions, melting glaciers, and catastrophic wildfires.By Melanie Challenger. 2021
What makes us human, and why are we so sure we're different from other animals?Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional,…
imaginative, aggressive, and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal rewrites the remarkable human story and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal.Most of our effects on the planet are the consequences of technological improvements and advances in our understanding of natural mechanisms. But why did this cognitive and technological edge come about in the first place and what kind of being has it made us? In How to Be Animal, Challenger brilliantly argues that this dizzying trajectory is the result of a singular characteristic of our species: the struggle with being an animal. Using a combination of memoir, historical texts, interweaving interviews and cultural and environmental history, How to Be Animal is lively and thought-provoking, bursting with ideas. This is a book for anyone who has ever contemplated what humans are and what makes our species so simultaneously brilliant and awful. Even more so, it is a book that asks tantalizing philosophical questions, such as whether and how human life matters. How to Be Animal is a tough-minded but ultimately sympathetic portrait of humanity. It exposes human beings as extraordinary animals defined by a profound struggle. In the third millennium, the way humans respond to being an animal among animals is the greatest and most inspiring challenge we face.By Hanif Abdurraqib. 2021
A stirring meditation on Black performance in America from the New York Times bestselling author of Go Ahead in the…
Rain &“Whether heralding unsung entertainers or reexamining legends, Hanif Abdurraqib weaves together gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance. I read this book breathlessly.&”—Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half At the March on Washington in 1963, Josephine Baker was fifty-seven years old, well beyond her most prolific days. But in her speech she was in a mood to consider her life, her legacy, her departure from the country she was now triumphantly returning to. &“I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too,&” she told the crowd. Inspired by these few words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it&’s the twenty-seven seconds in &“Gimme Shelter&” in which Merry Clayton wails the words &“rape, murder,&” a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib&’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance. Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain, infused with the lyricism and rhythm of the musicians he loves. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, OhioBy Robin DiAngelo. 2018
The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged,…
and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this &“vital, necessary, and beautiful book&” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and &“allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to &‘bad people&’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructivelyBy Michaeleen Doucleff. 2021
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The oldest cultures in the world have mastered the art of raising happy, well-adjusted children. What…
can we learn from them? " Hunt, Gather, Parent is full of smart ideas that I immediately wanted to force on my own kids." —Pamela Druckerman, The New York Times Book Review When Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff becomes a mother, she examines the studies behind modern parenting guidance and finds the evidence frustratingly limited and the conclusions often ineffective. Curious to learn about more effective parenting approaches, she visits a Maya village in the Yucatán Peninsula. There she encounters moms and dads who parent in a totally different way than we do—and raise extraordinarily kind, generous, and helpful children without yelling, nagging, or issuing timeouts. What else, Doucleff wonders, are Western parents missing out on? In Hunt, Gather, Parent , Doucleff sets out with her three-year-old daughter in tow to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world's most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She sees that these cultures don't have the same problems with children that Western parents do. Most strikingly, parents build a relationship with young children that is vastly different from the one many Western parents develop—it's built on cooperation instead of control, trust instead of fear, and personalized needs instead of standardized development milestones. Maya parents are masters at raising cooperative children. Without resorting to bribes, threats, or chore charts, Maya parents rear loyal helpers by including kids in household tasks from the time they can walk. Inuit parents have developed a remarkably effective approach for teaching children emotional intelligence. When kids cry, hit, or act out, Inuit parents respond with a calm, gentle demeanor that teaches children how to settle themselves down and think before acting. Hadzabe parents are world experts on raising confident, self-driven kids with a simple tool that protects children from stress and anxiety, so common now among American kids. Not only does Doucleff live with families and observe their techniques firsthand, she also applies them with her own daughter, with striking results. She learns to discipline without yelling. She talks to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explains how these strategies can impact children's mental health and development. Filled with practical takeaways that parents can implement immediately, Hunt, Gather, Parent helps us rethink the ways we relate to our children, and reveals a universal parenting paradigm adapted for American familiesBy Juan Villoro. 2021
At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening…
tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city. Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city &’s cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today—one of the world&’s leading cultural and financial centers. In this deeply iconoclastic book, Villoro organizes his text around a recurring series of topics: &“Living in the City,&” &“City Characters,&” &“Shocks,&” &“Crossings,&” and &“Ceremonies.&” What he achieves, miraculously, is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City&’s genius loci, its spirit of placeBy Luke Epplin. 2021
The riveting story of four men — Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige — whose improbable union…
on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond. In July 1947, not even three months after Jackie Robinson debuted on the Brooklyn Dodgers, snapping the color line that had segregated Major League Baseball, Larry Doby would follow in his footsteps on the Cleveland Indians. Though Doby, as the second Black player in the majors, would struggle during his first summer in Cleveland, his subsequent turnaround in 1948 from benchwarmer to superstar sparked one of the wildest and most meaningful seasons in baseball history. In intimate, absorbing detail, Luke Epplin's Our Team traces the story of the integration of the Cleveland Indians and their quest for a World Series title through four key participants: Bill Veeck, an eccentric and visionary owner adept at exploding fireworks on and off the field; Larry Doby, a soft-spoken, hard-hitting pioneer whose major-league breakthrough shattered stereotypes that so much of white America held about Black ballplayers; Bob Feller, a pitching prodigy from the Iowa cornfields who set the template for the athlete as businessman; and Satchel Paige, a legendary pitcher from the Negro Leagues whose belated entry into the majors whipped baseball fans across the country into a frenzy. Together, as the backbone of a team that epitomized the postwar American spirit in all its hopes and contradictions, these four men would captivate the nation by storming to the World Series—all the while rewriting the rules of what was possible in sports. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books "Epplin's epic saga is simultaneously a riveting drama and a searing portrait of the racism that plagued baseball for decades. This sharp and well-documented history will be a hit with baseball lovers and general interest readers alike." — Publishers Weekly, starred reviewBy C. Eric Lincoln. 2021
Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. The…
Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven mainline black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black Church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary black culture. In examining both the internal structure of the Church and the reactions of the Church to external, societal changes, the authors provide important insights into the Church's relationship to politics, economics, women, youth, and music. Among other topics, Lincoln and Mamiya discuss the attitude of the clergy toward women pastors, the reaction of the Church to the civil rights movement, the attempts of the Church to involve young people, the impact of the black consciousness movement and Black Liberation Theology and clergy, and trends that will define the Black Church well into the next centuryBy Isabel Allende. 2021
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes &“a bold exploration of womanhood,…
feminism, parenting, aging, love and more&” (Associated Press). &“ The Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allende&’s most liberating book yet.&”— Elle &“When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,&” begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without &“resources or voice.&” Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn&’t have. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote &“with a knife between our teeth&” about women&’s issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one&’s sexuality. So what feeds the soul of feminists—and all women—today? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over our bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work yet to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will &“light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished.&rdquoBy Philinda Masters, the Broadside Collective. 2019
Includes Susan G. Cole interviewing Gloria Steinem and writing by Margaret Atwood, Susan Crean, June Callwood, and Marian Engel. Broadside:…
A Feminist Review was a groundbreaking Canadian feminist newspaper published between 1979 and 1989. While Broadside paid attention to everything from feminists making art to street activism, it also covered the mainstream, from pop culture to peacemaking. The Broadside team uncovered the work of female artists and developed challenging and risky new ideas, all while participating in the day-to-day organizing of a grassroots movement. Broadside helped reinvent journalism to make room for a feminist voice. This collection looks at the impact of the newspaper on the lives of women. Through a selection of key articles, the book explores the issues and events, the conflicts and controversies, and the debates and discoveries of feminist theory and activism that formed the context and content of a decade of change.By Johannes Krause. 2021
&“Thrilling . . . a bracing summary of what we have learned [from] &‘archaeogenetics&’—the study of ancient DNA . .…
. Krause and Trappe capture the excitement of this young field.&”—Kyle Harper, The Wall Street Journal Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a brilliant pioneer in the field of archaeogenetics—archaeology augmented by DNA sequencing technology—which has allowed scientists to reconstruct human history reaching back hundreds of thousands of years before recorded time. In this surprising account, Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe rewrite a fascinating chapter of this history, the peopling of Europe, that takes us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans to the present. We know now that a wave of farmers from Anatolia migrated into Europe 8,000 years ago, essentially displacing the dark-skinned, blue-eyed hunter-gatherers who preceded them. This Anatolian farmer DNA is one of the core genetic components of people with contemporary European ancestry. Archaeogenetics has also revealed that indigenous North and South Americans, though long thought to have been East Asian, also share DNA with contemporary Europeans. Krause and Trappe vividly introduce us to the prehistoric cultures of the ancient Europeans: the Aurignacians, innovative artisans who carved flutes and animal and human forms from bird bones more than 40,000 years ago; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt; and the Gravettians, big-game hunters who were Europe&’s most successful early settlers until they perished in the ice age. Genetics has earned a reputation for smuggling racist ideologies into science, but cutting-edge science makes nonsense of eugenics and &“pure&” bloodlines. Immigration and genetic exchanges have always defined our species; who we are is a question of culture, not biological inheritance. This revelatory book offers us an entirely new way to understand ourselves, both past and presentBy Abigail Tucker. 2021
"For anyone who is a mother, or who has a mother, [ Mom Genes ] is an eye-opening tour through…
the biology and psychology of a role that is at once utterly ordinary and wondrously strange." —Annie Murphy Paul, author of Origins From the New York Times bestselling author of The Lion in the Living Room comes a fascinating and provocative exploration of the biology of motherhood. Everyone knows how babies are made, but scientists are only just beginning to understand the making of a mother. Mom Genes reveals the hard science behind our tenderest maternal impulses, tackling questions such as whether a new mom's brain ever really bounces back, why mothers are destined to mimic their own moms (or not), and how maternal aggression makes females the world's most formidable creatures. Part scientific odyssey, part memoir, Mom Genes weaves the latest research with Abigail Tucker's personal experiences to create a delightful, surprising, and poignant portrait of motherhood. It's vital reading for anyone who has ever wondered what rocks the hand that rocks the cradleBy Shayla Lawson. 2020
From a fierce and humorous new voice comes a relevant, insightful, and riveting collection of personal essays on the richness…
and resilience of black girl culture—for readers of Samantha Irby, Roxane Gay, Morgan Jerkins, and Lindy West. Shayla Lawson is major. You don't know who she is. Yet. But that's okay. She is on a mission to move black girls like herself from best supporting actress to a starring role in the major narrative. Whether she's taking on workplace microaggressions or upending racist stereotypes about her home state of Kentucky, she looks for the side of the story that isn't always told, the places where the voices of black girls haven't been heard. The essays in This is Major ask questions like: Why are black women invisible to AI? What is "black girl magic"? Or: Am I one viral tweet away from becoming Twitter famous? And: How much magic does it take to land a Tinder date? With a unique mix of personal stories, pop culture observations, and insights into politics and history, Lawson sheds light on these questions, as well as the many ways black women and girls have influenced mainstream culture—from their style, to their language, and even their art—and how "major" they really are. Timely, enlightening, and wickedly sharp, This Is Major places black women at the center—no longer silenced, no longer the minorityA compelling story that will resonate with feminists who hope to change the world, one kind boy at a time…
This book is a true love letter, not only to Jha's own son but also to all of our sons and to the parents—especially mothers—who raise them.&” —Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre A beautifully written and deeply personal story of struggling, failing, and eventually succeeding at raising a feminist son, this empowering book offers much-needed insight and actionable advice. From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, we have big work to do when it comes to our boys. Informed by the author's work as a professor of journalism specializing in social justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, and other parents and boys, this book follows one mother's journey to raise a feminist son as a single immigrant woman of color in America. Through stories from her own life and wide-ranging research, Sonora Jha shows us all how to be better feminists and better teachers of the next generation of men in this electrifying tour de force. * This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF of the Resources section of the book. "A beautiful hybrid of memoir, manifesto, instruction manual, and rumination on the power of story and possibilities of family." —Rebecca Solnit, author of The Mother of All QuestionsBy Nimmi Gowrinathan. 2021
An urgent corrective to the erasure of the female fighter from narratives on gender and power, demanding that we see…
all women as political actors. "Violence, for me, and for the women I chronicle in this book, is simply a political reality." Though the female fighter is often seen as an anomaly, women make up nearly 30% of militant movements worldwide. Historically, these women—viewed as victims, weak-willed wives, and prey to Stockholm Syndrome—have been deeply misunderstood. Radicalizing Her holds the female fighter up in all her complexity as a kind of mirror to contemporary conversations on gender, violence, and power. The narratives at the heart of the book are centered in the Global South, and extend to a criticism of the West's response to the female fighter, revealing the arrayed forces that have driven women into battle and the personal and political elements of these decisions. Gowrinathan, whose own family history is intertwined with resistance, spent nearly twenty years in conversation with female fighters in Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Pakistan, and Colombia. The intensity of these interactions consistently unsettled her assumptions about violence, re-positioning how these women were positioned in relation to power. Gowrinathan posits that the erasure of the female fighter from narratives on gender and power is not only dangerous but also, anti-feminist. She argues for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of women who choose violence noting in particular the tendency of contemporary political discourse to parse the world into for—and against—camps: an understanding of motivations to fight is read as condoning violence, and oppressive agendas are given the upper hand by the moral imperative to condemn it. Coming at a political moment that demands an urgent re-imagining of the possibilities for women to resist, Radicalizing Her reclaims women's roles in political struggles on the battlefield and in the streetsBy Dorothy Sue Cobble. 2021
For the Many presents an inspiring look at how US women and their global allies pushed the nation and the…
world toward justice and greater equality for all. Reclaiming social democracy as one of the central threads of American feminism, Dorothy Sue Cobble offers a bold rewriting of twentieth-century feminist history and documents how forces, peoples, and ideas worldwide shaped American politics. Cobble follows egalitarian women's activism from the explosion of democracy movements before World War I to the establishment of the New Deal, through the upheavals in rights and social citizenship at midcentury, to the reassertion of conservatism and the revival of female-led movements today. Cobble brings to life the women who crossed borders of class, race, and nation to build grassroots campaigns, found international institutions, and enact policies dedicated to raising standards of life for everyone. Listeners encounter famous figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, and Mary McLeod Bethune, together with less well-known leaders, such as Rose Schneiderman, Maida Springer Kemp, and Esther Peterson. Multiple generations partnered to expand social and economic rights, and despite setbacks, the fight for the many persists, as twenty-first-century activists urgently demand a more caring, inclusive worldBy Jeremy DeSilva. 2021
Blending history, science, and culture, a stunning and highly engaging evolutionary story exploring how walking on two legs allowed humans…
to become the planet's dominant species. Humans are the only mammals to walk on two, rather than four legs—a locomotion known as bipedalism. We strive to be upstanding citizens, honor those who stand tall and proud, and take a stand against injustices. We follow in each other's footsteps and celebrate a child's beginning to walk. But why, and how, exactly, did we take our first steps? And at what cost? Bipedalism has its drawbacks: giving birth is more difficult and dangerous; our running speed is much slower than other animals; and we suffer a variety of ailments, from hernias to sinus problems. In First Steps, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva explores how unusual and extraordinary this seemingly ordinary ability is. A seven-million-year journey to the very origins of the human lineage, First Steps shows how upright walking was a gateway to many of the other attributes that make us human—from our technological abilities, our thirst for exploration, our use of language–and may have laid the foundation for our species' traits of compassion, empathy, and altruism. Moving from developmental psychology labs to ancient fossil sites throughout Africa and Eurasia, DeSilva brings to life our adventure walking on two legs. Delving deeply into the story of our past and the new discoveries rewriting our understanding of human evolution, First Steps examines how walking upright helped us rise above all over species on this planetBy Anita Diamant. 2021
From beloved New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Anita Diamant comes a timely collection of essays to help…
inspire period positive activism around the globe. When Period. End of Sentence won an Oscar in 2019, the film's co-producer and Executive Director of The Pad Project, Melissa Berton, told the audience: "A period should end a sentence, not a girl's education." Continuing in that revolutionary spirit and building on the momentum of the acclaimed documentary, this book outlines the challenges facing those who menstruate worldwide and the solutions championed by a new generation of body positive activists, innovators and public figures. Including interviews from people on the frontlines—parents, teachers, medical professionals, and social-justice warriors — Period. End of Sentence. illuminates the many ways that menstrual injustice can limit opportunities, erode self-esteem, and even threaten lives. This powerful examination of the far-ranging and quickly evolving movement for menstrual justice introduces today's leaders and shows us how we can be part of the change. Fearless, revolutionary, and fascinating, Period. End of Sentence. is an essential read for anyone interested in empowering women, girls, and others around the world. To learn more about The Pad Project, go to ThePadProject.orgBy Peter Ward. 2019
How often did our ancestors bathe? How often did they wash their clothes and change them? What did they understand…
cleanliness to be? Why have our hygienic habits changed so dramatically over time? In short, how have we come to be so clean? The Clean Body explores one of the most fundamental and pervasive cultural changes in Western history since the seventeenth century: the personal hygiene revolution. In the age of Louis XIV bathing was rare and hygiene was mainly a matter of wearing clean underclothes. By the late twentieth century frequent - often daily - bathing had become the norm and wearing freshly laundered clothing the general practice. Cleanliness, once simply a requirement for good health, became an essential element of beauty. Beneath this transformation lay a sea change in understandings, motives, ideologies, technologies, and practices, all of which shaped popular habits over time. Peter Ward explains that what began as an urban bourgeois phenomenon in the later eighteenth century became a universal condition by the end of the twentieth, touching young and old, rich and poor, city dwellers and country residents alike. Based on a wealth of sources in English, French, German, and Italian, The Clean Body surveys the great hygienic transformation that took place across Europe and North America over the course of four centuries.