Title search results
Showing 161 - 180 of 28955 items
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
By Alicia Elliott. 2019
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTIONNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF…
2019 BY THE GLOBE AND MAIL • CBC • CHATELAINE • QUILL & QUIRE • THE HILL TIMES • POP MATTERSA bold and profound meditation on trauma, legacy, oppression and racism in North America from award-winning Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliott.In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about the treatment of Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight into the ongoing legacy of colonialism. She engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrifcation, writing and representation, and in the process makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political—from overcoming a years-long battle with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft Dinner to how systemic oppression is directly linked to health problems in Native communities. With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott provides a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future.Square haunting: Five writers in london between the wars
By Francesca Wade. 2020
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to…
the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures-many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living-and therefore of being-these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence. Square Haunting is a glorious portrait of five of the square's inhabitants whose lives intersected in the interwar years: modernist poet and novelist Hilda Doolittle; crime writer Dorothy Sayers; celebrated classicist Jane Harrison; historian and suffragist Eileen Power; and Virginia Woolf. Francesca Wade's luminous group biography restores a female voice to London's streets, revealing five unforgettable characters who forged careers and identities that would have been impossible without these rooms of their own. Roving across a time of historical upheaval, Wade takes us beyond the famed bohemian parties and political salons into the emotional texture and gender politics of daily life itself-and an era that gave birth to a new modes of working, loving, and beingShakespeare in a divided america: What his plays tell us about our past and future
By James Shapiro. 2020
One of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year A New York Times Notable Book From leading…
scholar James Shapiro, a timely exploration of what Shakespeare&’s plays reveal about our divided land, from Revolutionary times to the present day The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. They are read at school by almost every student, staged in theaters across the land, and long valued by conservatives and liberals alike. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, writers and soldiers—have turned to Shakespeare&’s works to explore the nation&’s fault lines, including such issues as manifest destiny, race, gender, immigration, and free speech. In a narrative arching across the centuries, from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare's four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned. Reflecting on how Shakespeare has been invoked—and at times weaponized—at pivotal moments in our past, Shapiro takes us from President John Quincy Adams&’s disgust with Desdemona&’s interracial marriage to Othello, to Abraham Lincoln&’s and his assassin John Wilkes Booth&’s competing obsessions with the plays, up through the fraught debates over marriage and same-sex love at the heart of the celebrated adaptations Kiss Me, Kate and Shakespeare in Love. His narrative culminates in the 2017 controversy over the staging of Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is assassinated. Deeply researched, and timely, Shakespeare in a Divided America reveals how no writer has been more closely embraced by Americans, or has shed more light on the hot-button issues in our history. Indeed, it is by better understanding Shakespeare's role in American life, Shapiro argues, that we might begin to mend our bitterly divided landFrom the New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a…
literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today. For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain , he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it&’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, &“We&’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn&’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?&” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible. Bestseller.The selected letters of ralph ellison
By Ralph Ellison. 2019
A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that trace the life and mind of a…
giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer&’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer&’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison&’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America&’s complexitiesThe tao of pooh
By Benjamin Hoff. 2015
Winnie-the-Pooh has a certain Way about him, a way of doing things that has made him the world's most beloved…
bear. In The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff shows that Pooh's Way is amazingly consistent with the principles of living envisioned by the Chinese founders of Taoism. The author's explanation of Taoism through Pooh, and Pooh through Taoism, shows that this is not simply an ancient and remote philosophy but something you can use, here and now.And what is Taoism? It's really very simple. It calls for living without preconceived ideas about how life should be lived-but it's not a preconception of how life-it's.... Well, you'd do better to listen to this book, and listen to Pooh, if you really want to find outIn Remembrance of Patients Past, historian Geoffrey Reaume remembers previously forgotten psychiatric patients by examining in rich detail their daily…
life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane (now called the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health – CAMH) from 1870-1940. Psychiatric patients endured abuse and could lead monotonous lives inside the asylum's walls, yet these same women and men worked hard at unpaid institutional jobs for years and decades on end, created their own entertainment, even in some cases made their own clothes, while forming meaningful relationships with other patients and some staff. Using first person accounts by and about patients – including letters written by inmates which were confiscated by hospital staff – Reaume weaves together a tapestry of stories about the daily lives of people confined behind brick walls that patients themselves built.Harry Potter and history (Wiley Pop Culture and History Series #bk. 1)
By Nancy R. Reagin. 2020
Harry Potter lives in a world that is both magical and historical. Hogwarts pupils ride an old-fashioned steam train to…
school, notes are taken on parchment with quill pens, and Muggle legends come to life in the form of werewolves, witches, and magical spells. This book is the first to explore the real history in which Harry's world is rooted. Did you know that bezoars and mandrakes were fashionable luxury items for centuries? Find out how Europeans first developed the potions, spells, and charms taught at Hogwarts, from Avada Kedavra to love charms. Learn how the European prosecution of witches led to the Statute of Secrecy, meet the real Nicholas Flamel, see how the Malfoys stack up against Muggle English aristocrats, and compare the history of the wizarding world to real-life historyThe world of Plymouth Plantation
By Carla Gardina Pestana. 2020
The English settlement at Plymouth has usually been seen in isolation. Indeed, the colonists gain our admiration in part because…
we envision them arriving on a desolate, frozen shore, far from assistance and forced to endure a deadly first winter alone. Yet Plymouth was, from its first year, a place connected to other places. Going beyond the tales we learned from schoolbooks, Carla Gardina Pestana offers an illuminating account of life in Plymouth Plantation.The colony was embedded in a network of trade and sociability. The Wampanoag, whose abandoned village the new arrivals used for their first settlement, were only the first among many people the English encountered and upon whom they came to rely. The colonists interacted with fishermen, merchants, investors, and numerous others who passed through the region. Plymouth was thereby linked to England, Europe, the Caribbean, Virginia, the American interior, and the coastal ports of West Africa. Pestana also draws out many colorful stories-of stolen red stockings, a teenager playing with gunpowder aboard ship, the gift of a chicken hurried through the woods to a sickbed. These moments speak intimately of the early North American experience beyond familiar events like the first Thanksgiving.On the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower landing and the establishment of the settlement, The World of Plymouth Plantation recovers the sense of real life there and sets the colony properly within global historyRooster Town: The History of an Urban Métis Community, 1901–1961
By Evelyn Peters, Matthew Stock, Adrian Werner. 2018
Melonville. Smokey Hollow. Bannock Town. Fort Tuyau. Little Chicago. Mud Flats. Pumpville. Tintown. La Coule. These were some of the…
names given to Métis communities at the edges of urban areas in Manitoba. Rooster Town, which was on the outskirts of southwest Winnipeg endured from 1901 to 1961. Those years in Winnipeg were characterized by the twin pressures of depression, and inflation, chronic housing shortages, and a spotty social support network. At the city’s edge, Rooster Town grew without city services as rural Métis arrived to participate in the urban economy and build their own houses while keeping Métis culture and community as a central part of their lives. In other growing settler cities, the Indigenous experience was largely characterized by removal and confinement. But the continuing presence of Métis living and working in the city, and the establishment of Rooster Town itself, made the Winnipeg experience unique. Rooster Town documents the story of a community rooted in kinship, culture, and historical circumstance, whose residents existed unofficially in the cracks of municipal bureaucracy, while navigating the legacy of settler colonialism and the demands of modernity and urbanization.La prose d'Alain Grandbois: ou lire et relire Les voyages de Marco Polo (Collection Grise)
By Patrick Moreau. 2019
OEuvre sinon mal aimée, du moins largement méconnue d'Alain Grandbois, Les voyages de Marco Polo ne manque pourtant pas d'intérêt,…
du moins si l'on accepte de lire ce récit comme une authentique création littéraire et non pas uniquement comme un texte qui relèverait d'un exotisme désuet. Présenté par Grandbois lui-même dans son avant-propos comme « un simple récit des voyages du Vénitien et des événements qui touchent plus particulièrement son époque », ce livre est en effet bien plus que cela.Le piège de la liberté: les peuples autochtones dans l'engrenage des régimes coloniaux
By Jean-Philippe Warren, Denys Delâge. 2017
La collision de la civilisation amérindienne avec la civilisation européenne a été d'une brutalité inouïe. Des travaux fouillés ont fait…
voir comment les populations aborigènes ont souffert à la fois du choc microbien, des politiques plus ou moins concertées d'extermination des puissances coloniales, des invasions militaires et de la négligence assumée des autorités gouvernementales. Cependant, les difficultés des peuples amérindiens du nord-est de l'Amérique à s'approprier ce qu'on a pris l'habitude de nommer le monde moderne ne provenaient pas uniquement de la méchanceté des « Blancs », de la violence des armes ou des épidémies. Ils ont également été brisés, malgré d'héroïques résistances, sur le terrain de la culture, entendue ici dans son sens le plus large.Minor feelings: An asian american reckoning
By Cathy Park Hong. 2020
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original…
exploration of Asian American consciousness &“Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.&”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen One of Time &’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year • Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, New Statesman, BuzzFeed, Esquire, The New York Public Library, and Book Riot Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world. Binding these essays together is Hong&’s theory of &“minor feelings.&” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these &“minor feelings&” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you&’re told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they&’re dissonant—and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. With sly humor and a poet&’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer&’s search to both uncover and speak the truth. Praise for Minor Feelings &“Hong begins her new book of essays with a bang. . . .The essays wander a variegated terrain of memoir, criticism and polemic, oscillating between smooth proclamations of certainty and twitches of self-doubt. . . . Minor Feelings is studded with moments [of] candor and dark humor shot through with glittering self-awareness.&” — The New York Times &“Hong uses her own experiences as a jumping off point to examine race and emotion in the United States.&” — Newsweek &“Powerful . . . [Hong] brings together memoiristic personal essay and reflection, historical accounts and modern reporting, and other works of art and writing, in order to amplify a multitude of voices and capture Asian America as a collection of contradictions. She does so with sharp wit and radical transparency.&” — Salon&“Terrific.&” –Timothy Egan, The New York Times &“ A riveting investigation of both American myth-making and the real history that…
lies beneath. &” – Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic From the New York Times bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, a &“terrifically readable&” ( Los Angeles Times ) account of one of the most persistent &“a lternative facts &” in American history: the story of a missionary, a tribe, a massacre, and a myth that shaped the American West In 1836, two missionaries and their wives were among the first Americans to cross the Rockies by covered wagon on what would become the Oregon Trail. Dr. Marcus Whitman and Reverend Henry Spalding were headed to present-day Washington state and Idaho, where they aimed to convert members of the Cayuse and Nez Perce tribes. Both would fail spectacularly as missionaries. But Spalding would succeed as a propagandist, inventing a story that recast his friend as a hero, and helped to fuel the massive westward migration that would eventually lead to the devastation of those they had purportedly set out to save. As Spalding told it, after uncovering a British and Catholic plot to steal the Oregon Territory from the United States, Whitman undertook a heroic solo ride across the country to alert the President. In fact, he had traveled to Washington to save his own job. Soon after his return, Whitman, his wife, and eleven others were massacred by a group of Cayuse. Though they had ample reason - Whitman supported the explosion of white migration that was encroaching on their territory, and seemed to blame for a deadly measles outbreak - the Cayuse were portrayed as murderous savages. Five were executed. This fascinating, impeccably researched narrative traces the ripple effect of these events across the century that followed. While the Cayuse eventually lost the vast majority of their territory, thanks to the efforts of Spalding and others who turned the story to their own purposes, Whitman was celebrated well into the middle of the 20th century for having "saved Oregon." Accounts of his heroic exploits appeared in congressional documents, The New York Times , and Life magazine, and became a central founding myth of the Pacific Northwest. Exposing the hucksterism and self-interest at the root of American myth-making, Murder at the Mission reminds us of the cost of American expansion, and of the problems that can arise when history is told only by the victorsScandinavian noir: In pursuit of a mystery
By Wendy Lesser. 2020
An in-depth and personal exploration of Scandinavian crime fiction as a way into Scandinavian culture at large For nearly four…
decades, Wendy Lesser's primary source of information about three Scandinavian countries-Sweden, Norway, and Denmark-was mystery and crime novels, and the murders committed and solved in their pages. Having never visited the region, Lesser constructed a fictional Scandinavia of her own making, something between a map, a portrait, and a cultural history of a place that both exists and does not exist. Lesser's Scandinavia is disproportionately populated with police officers, but also with the stuff of everyday life, the likes of which are relayed in great detail in the novels she read: a fully realized world complete with its own traditions, customs, and, of course, people. Over the course of many years, Lesser's fictional Scandinavia grew more and more solidly visible to her, yet she never had a strong desire to visit the real countries that corresponded to the made-up ones. Until, she writes, "between one day and the next, that no longer seemed sufficient." It was time to travel to ScandinaviaThree-martini afternoons at the ritz: The rebellion of sylvia plath & anne sexton
By Gail Crowther. 2021
A vividly rendered and empathetic exploration of how two of the greatest poets of the 20th century—Sylvia Plath and Anne…
Sexton—became bitter rivals and, eventually, friends. Introduced at a workshop in Boston University led by the acclaimed and famous poet Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton formed a friendship that would soon evolve into a fierce rivalry, colored by jealousy and respect in equal terms. In the years that followed, these two women would not only become iconic figures in literature, but also lead curiously parallel lives haunted by mental illness, suicide attempts, self-doubt, and difficult personal relationships. With weekly martini meetings at the Ritz to discuss everything from sex to suicide, theirs was a relationship as complex and subversive as their poetry. Based on in-depth research and unprecedented archival access, Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz is a remarkable and unforgettable look at two legendary poets and how their work has turned them into lasting and beloved cultural figuresOrwell in Cuba: How 1984 Came to Be Published in Castro’s Twilight
By Donald Winkler, Frédérick Lavoie. 2020
Orwell in Cuba chronicles journalist Frédérick Lavoie’s attempts to unravel the motives behind the mysterious appearance of a new translation…
of George Orwell’s 1984, formerly taboo in Cuba, just ahead of the country’s twenty-fifth International Book Fair. Lavoie works to make sense of how Cubans feel about the past, present, and future of their island – and how the political regime is adapting, or not, to life in the twenty-first century. His intertwined quests give readers the unique experience of following a suspenseful trail while at the same time becoming increasingly familiar with Cubans’ relationship to the regime and their strategies for coping with the island’s often challenging living conditions.The science of middle-earth
By Roland Lehoucq. 2021
The surprising and illuminating look at how Tolkien's love of science and natural history shaped the creation of his Middle…
Earth, from its flora and fauna to its landscapes. The world J.R.R. Tolkien created is one of the most beloved in all of literature, and continues to capture hearts and imaginations around the world. From Oxford to ComiCon, the Middle Earth is analyzed and interpreted through a multitude of perspectives. But one essential facet of Tolkien and his Middle Earth has been overlooked: science. This great writer, creator of worlds and unforgettable character, and inventor of language was also a scientific autodidact, with an innate interest and grasp of botany, paleontologist and geologist, with additional passions for archeology and chemistry. Tolkien was an acute observer of flora and fauna and mined the minds of his scientific friends about ocean currents and volcanoes. It is these layers science that give his imaginary universe—and the creatures and characters that inhabit it—such concreteness. Within this gorgeously illustrated edition, a range of scientists—from astrophysicists to physicians, botanists to volcanologists—explore Tolkien's novels, poems, and letters to reveal their fascinating scientific roots. A rewarding combination of literary exploration and scientific discovery, The Science of Middle Earth reveals the hidden meaning of the Ring's corruption, why Hobbits have big feet, the origins of the Dwarves, the animals which inspired the dragons, and even whether or not an Ent is possible. Enhanced by superb original drawings, this transportive work will delight both Tolkien fans and science lovers and inspire us to view both Middle Earth—and our own world—with fresh eyesLanguages of truth: Essays 2003-2020
By Salman Rushdie. 2021
Newly collected, revised, and expanded nonfiction—including many texts never previously in print—from the first two decades of the twenty-first century…
by the Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie is celebrated as a storyteller of the highest order, illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time. Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, Languages of Truth chronicles Rushdie&’s intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison mean to him, whether on the page or in person. He delves deep into the nature of &“truth,&” revels in the vibrant malleability of language and the creative lines that can join art and life, and looks anew at migration, multiculturalism, and censorship. Enlivened on every page by Rushdie&’s signature wit and dazzling voice, Languages of Truth offers the author&’s most piercingly analytical views yet on the evolution of literature and culture even as he takes us on an exhilarating tour of his own exuberant and fearless imaginationReal Estate
By Deborah Levy. 2021
From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, comes the highly anticipated final installment in Deborah Levy's…
critically acclaimed "living autobiography" series."I began to wonder what myself and all unwritten and unseen women would possess in their property portfolios at the end of their lives. Literally, her physical property and possessions, and then everything else she valued, though it might not be valued by society. What might she claim, own, discard and bequeath? Or is she the real estate, owned by patriarchy? In this sense, Real Estate is a tricky business. We rent it and buy it, sell and inherit it--but we must also knock it down."Following the international critical acclaim of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Deborah Levy's "living autobiography" is an exhilarating, thought-provoking, and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it.