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Begin again: James baldwin's america and its urgent lessons for our own
By Eddie S Glaude. 2020
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America…
to confront its lies about race. In our own moment, when that confrontation feels more urgently needed than ever, what can we learn from his struggle? NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND TIME • Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice • &“A powerful study of how to bear witness in a moment when America is being called to do the same.&”— Time We live, according to Eddie S. Glaude Jr., in a moment when the struggles of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to achieve a new America have been challenged by the election of Donald Trump, a president whose victory represents yet another failure of America to face the lies it tells itself about race. From Charlottesville to the policies of child separation at the border, his administration turned its back on the promise of Obama&’s presidency and refused to embrace a vision of the country shorn of the insidious belief that white people matter more than others. We have been here before: For James Baldwin, these after times came in the wake of the civil rights movement, when a similar attempt to compel a national confrontation with the truth was answered with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In these years, spanning from the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963 to that of No Name in the Street in 1972, Baldwin transformed into a more overtly political writer, a change that came at great professional and personal cost. But from that journey, Baldwin emerged with a sense of renewed purpose about the necessity of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair. In the story of Baldwin&’s crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography—drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews—with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude&’s endeavor, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new AmericaThe book collectors: A band of syrian rebels and the stories that carried them through a war
By Delphine Minoui. 2020
"An urgent and compelling account of great bravery and passion." ―Susan Orlean Award-winning journalist Delphine Minoui recounts the true story…
of a band of young rebels, a besieged Syrian town, and an underground library built from the rubble of war Reading is an act of resistance. Daraya is a town outside Damascus, the very spot where the Syrian Civil War began. Long a site of peaceful resistance to the Assad regimes, Daraya fell under siege in 2012. For four years, no one entered or left, and aid was blocked. Every single day, bombs fell on this place―a place of homes and families, schools and children, now emptied and broken into bits. And then a group searching for survivors stumbled upon a cache of books in the rubble. In a week, they had six thousand volumes; in a month, fifteen thousand. A sanctuary was born: a library where people could escape the blockade, a paper fortress to protect their humanity. The library offered a marvelous range of books―from Arabic poetry to American self-help, Shakespearean plays to stories of war in other times and places. The visitors shared photos and tales of their lives before the war, planned how to build a democracy, and tended the roots of their community despite shell-shocked soil. In the midst of the siege, the journalist Delphine Minoui tracked down one of the library's founders, twenty-three-year-old Ahmad. Over text messages, WhatsApp, and Facebook, Minoui came to know the young men who gathered in the library, exchanged ideas, learned English, and imagined how to shape the future, even as bombs kept falling from above. By telling their stories, Minoui makes a far-off, complicated war immediate and reveals these young men to be everyday heroes as inspiring as the books they read. The Book Collectors is a testament to their bravery and a celebration of the power of wordsOne Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays
By Scaachi Koul. 2017
**National Bestseller**A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice**A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2017**A National Post Best Book…
of 2017**A CBC Best Book of 2017**An Amazon Best Book of 2017**A Popsugar Best Book of 2017**A Kobo Best Book of 2017**An NPR Best Book of 2017**A Chatelaine Best Book of 2017**A Buzzfeed Best Book of 2017**A Book Riot Best Book of 2017**A Chicago Review of Books Best Book of 2017**A Paste Best Book of 2017**An Amazon Best Humour and Entertainment Book of 2017**Finalist for the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize**Finalist for the 2018 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour**Nominated for the 2017 Goodreads Choice AwardFor readers of Mindy Kaling, Jenny Lawson and Roxane Gay, a debut collection of fierce and funny essays about growing up the daughter of Indian immigrants in Canada, "a land of ice and casual racism," by the irreverent, hilarious cultural observer and incomparable rising star, Scaachi Koul.In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi deploys her razor-sharp humour to share her fears, outrages and mortifying experiences as an outsider growing up in Canada. Her subjects range from shaving her knuckles in grade school, to a shopping trip gone horribly awry, to dealing with internet trolls, to feeling out of place at an Indian wedding (as an Indian woman), to parsing the trajectory of fears and anxieties that pressed upon her immigrant parents and bled down a generation. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of colour, where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision or outright scorn. Where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, forcing her to confront questions about gender dynamics, racial tensions, ethnic stereotypes and her father’s creeping mortality—all as she tries to find her feet in the world. With a clear eye and biting wit, Scaachi Koul explores the absurdity of a life steeped in misery. And through these intimate, wise and laugh-out-loud funny dispatches, a portrait of a bright new literary voice emerges.Hamnet and Judith: A novel
By Maggie O'Farrell. 2020
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION"[An] exceptional winner.... It expresses something profound about the human experience that seems both…
extraordinarily current and at the same time, enduring." --Martha Lane Fox, Chair of The Women's Prize for Fiction judges TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A PLAGUE THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an eccentric young woman: a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles on the Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband. His gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when their beloved twins, Hamnet and Judith, are afflicted with the bubonic plague, and, devastatingly, one of them succumbs to the illness.A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time, Hamnet & Judith is mesmerizing and seductive, an impossible-to-put-down novel from one of our most gifted writers.Published as Hamnet in the US and the UK.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 outHarry 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 historyLa 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.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.&” — SalonScandinavian 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.The Cost of Living
By Deborah Levy. 2021
A New York Times Notable Book of 2018Longlisted for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionFrom the twice-Booker-shortlisted…
author comes a witty and audacious examination of writing and womanhood"Life falls apart. We try to get a grip. We try to hold it together. And then we realize that we don't want to hold it together."Crystalline, witty and audacious, The Cost of Living addresses itself to the dual experiences of writing and of womanhood, examining what is essential in each. Following the acclaimed Things I Don't Want to Know, which reflected deeply on the nature of gender politics and a life in letters, The Cost of Living returns to the same subject and to the same life, to find a writer in radical flux. If a woman dismantles her life, expands it and puts it back together in a new shape, how might she describe this new composition? "Words have to open the mind. When words close the mind you can be sure that someone has been reduced to nothingness." In this elegiac second instalment of her "living autobiography", Deborah Levy considers what it means to live with value and meaning and pleasure. The Cost of Living is a vital and astonishing testimony, as distinctive, wide-ranging and original as Levy's acclaimed novels.Why comics?: from underground to everywhere
By Hillary Chute. 2017
Exploration of the art forms of comics and graphic novels--particularly those that are part of underground movements--through ten themes, including…
disaster, superheroes, sex, the suburbs, cities, punk, illness and disability, girls, war, and queer. Includes a discussion of fan culture. Some strong language and some explicit descriptions of sex. 2017