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The devil problem and other true stories: And Other True Stories
By David Remnick. 1996
Portraits of prominent people, giving attention to "the gap between private life and public ambition." Focuses on personalities such as…
Gary Hart from politics and Reggie Jackson from sports to depict a common theme about personal success and tragedyThe Morrow anthology of great Western short stories
By Jon Tuska. 1997
This collection of twenty-eight western short stories from the 1920s-1990s includes works by renowned writers such as Zane Grey, Max…
Brand, Conrad Richter, Alan LeMay, and Cherry Wilson, as well as contemporary tales by Richard Wheeler, Ernest Haycox, and Cynthia Haseloff. Some strong languageWhatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life after Sexual Assault
By Jen Sookfong Lee. 2019
Personal stories of surviving after the trauma of sexual assault. In the era of #MeToo, we’ve become better at talking…
about sexual assault. But sexual assault isn’t limited to a single, terrible moment of violence: it stays with survivors, following them wherever they go. Through the voices of twelve diverse writers, Whatever Gets You Through offers a powerful look at the narrative of sexual assault not covered by the headlines—the weeks, months, and years of survival and adaptation that people live through in its aftermath. With a foreword by Jessica Valenti, an extensive introduction by editors Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee, and contributions from acclaimed literary voices such as Alicia Elliott, Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Heather O’Neill, and Juliane Okot Bitek, the collection explores some of the many different forms that survival can take. From ice hockey to kink, boxing to tapestry-making, these striking personal essays address experiences as varied as the writers who have lived them. With candor and insight, each writer shares their own unique account of enduring: the everyday emotional pain and trauma, but also the incredible resilience and strength that can emerge in the aftermath of sexual assault. Contributors: Gwen Benaway Juliane Okot Bitek Elly Danica Amber Dawn Alicia Elliott Karyn Freedman Heather O’Neill Elisabeth de Mariaffi Lauren McKeon Soraya Palmer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Kai Cheng ThomBest Canadian Stories 2018
By Russel Smith. 2018
Now in its 48th year, Best Canadian Stories has long championed the short story form and highlighted the work of…
many writers who have gone on to shape the Canadian literary canon. Caroline Adderson, Margaret Atwood, Clark Blaise, Tamas Dobozy, Mavis Gallant, Douglas Glover, Norman Levine, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, Diane Schoemperlen, Kathleen Winter, and many others have appeared in its pages over the decades, making Best Canadian Stories the go-to source for what’s new in Canadian fiction writing for close to five decades. Selected by guest editor Russell Smith, the 2018 edition draws together both newer and established writers to shape an engaging and luminous mosaic of writing in this country today—a continuation of not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters. Best Canadian Stories 2018 features work by: Shashi Bhat, Tom Thor Buchanan, Lynn Coady, Deirdre Simon Dore, Alicia Elliott, Bill Gaston, Liz Harmer, Brad Hartle, David Huebert, Reg Johanson, Amy Jones, Michael LaPointe, Stephen Marche, Lisa Moore, Kathy Page, and Alex Pugsley.How to Die: A Book About Being Alive
By Ray Robertson. 2020
“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live,” writes Montaigne in Essais, and in How to…
Die: A Book on Being Alive, Ray Robertson takes up the challenge. Though contemporary society avoids the subject and often values the mere continuation of existence over its quality, Robertson argues that the active and intentional consideration of death is neither morbid nor frivolous, but instead essential to our ability to fully value life. How to Die is both an absorbing excursion through some of Western literature’s most compelling works on the subject of death as well as an anecdote-driven argument for cultivating a better understanding of death in the belief that, if we do, we’ll know more about what it means to live a meaningful life.But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
By Chuck Klosterman. 2016
New York Times bestselling author Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about…
our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music, five hundred years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or-weirder still-widely known, but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we "overrate" democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we've reached the end of knowledge? Klosterman visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past. Kinetically slingshotting through a broad spectrum of objective and subjective problems, But What If We're Wrong? is built on interviews with a variety of creative thinkers-George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Diaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, among others-interwoven with the type of high-wire humor and nontraditional analysis only Klosterman would dare to attempt. It's a seemingly impossible achievement: a book about the things we cannot know, explained as if we did. It's about how we live now, once "now" has become "then."The Book of Delights
By Ross Gay. 2018
The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyric essays, written daily over…
a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders. Ross Gay's The Book of Delights is a genre-defying book of essays- some as short as a paragraph; some as long as five pages-that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives. His is a meditation on delight that takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities, even the terrors, in his life, including living in America as a black man; the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture; the loss of those he loves.Richard Jewell: A Private War
By Marie Brenner. 2018
Now a major film from Academy Awardwinning director Clint Eastwoodstarring Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, and Paul…
Walter Hauser! This collection of captivating profiles from Vanity Fair writer Marie Brenner spans her award-winning career and features larger-than-life figures such as Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, Malala Yousafzai, and Richard Jewellthe security guard whose dramatic heroism at the bombing of the 1996 Olympics made him the FBI's prime suspect. Previously published as A Private War, Marie Brenner's Richard Jewell tells a gripping true story of heroism and injustice. In the early morning hours of July 27, 1996, three pipe bombs exploded at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, killing one person and injuring 111 others. Hundreds more potential casualties were prevented by the vigilance and quick actions of security guard Richard Jewell, who uncovered the bombs and began evacuating the area. But no good deed goes unpunished. Desperate for a lead, investigators and journalists pursued Jewell as a potential suspect in the case, painting him as an obvious match for the infamous "lone bomber" profile. Accused of being a terrorist and a failed law enforcement officer who craved public recognition for his false heroics, he saw his reputation smeared across headlines and broadcasts nationwide. After a months-long investigation found no evidence against him, the US Attorney finally cleared Jewell's name. Yet Jewell would not be fully exonerated in the eyes of the public until the actual bomber confessed in 2005, just two years before Jewell's premature death at the age of forty-four. In Richard Jewell, veteran journalist Marie Brenner brilliantly chronicles Jewell's ordeal to share the story of an ordinary man whose life was shattered by a false narrative. This collection also includes Brenner's classic encounters with Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, Malala Yousafzai, Marie Colvin, and others.Time is the thing a body moves through: an essay
By T Fleischmann. 2019
How do the bodies we inhabit affect our relationship with art? How does art affect our relationship to our bodies?…
T Fleischmann uses Felix Gonzáles-Torres's artwork-piles of candy, stacks of paper, puzzles-as a path through questions of love and loss, violence and rejuvenation, gender and sexuality. From the back porches of Buffalo to the galleries of New York and L.A. and the farmhouses of rural Tennessee, artwork acts as still points, sites for reflection situated in lived experience. Fleischmann combines serious engagement with warmth and clarity of prose, reveling in the experiences and pleasures of art and the body, identity, and communityDo no harm: the opioid epidemic
By Harry Wiland. 2020
The Opioid Epidemic is the worst man-made epidemic in the history of our nation. More people die each year from…
an opioid overdose than in automobile accidents. The statistics are staggering. Do No Harm spotlights experts, journalists, and public-health crusaders who are combating the special interests of Big Pharma and informing the world on how an aggressive pharmaceutical mass-marketing campaign for the new drug OxyContin misled doctors and the public into our current crisis of death and addiction. Wiland highlights the stories of those hit hardest by prescription-opioid addiction and overdose death and sheds light on how whole communities have been ravaged by the spread of addiction. Despite regional health experts, local government, law enforcement, journalists, and the DEA's efforts to combat the epidemic, people continue to die at an alarming rate from prescription-drug overdoses. The chapters of this book chronical this epidemic in all its complexity from many perspectives including the plight of the millions of Americans who suffer from opioid addiction. People, young and old, on the rocky road to recovery tell their harrowing stories, current victories, and on-going struggles with the diseaseDark chapter
By Winnie M Li. 2019
Vivian is a cosmopolitan Taiwanese-American tourist who often escapes her busy life in London through adventure and travel. Johnny is…
a fifteen-year-old Irish teenager living a neglected life on the margins of society. He has grown up in a family where crime is customary, violence is a necessity, and everything-and anyone-can be yours for the taking. As Vivian looks to find her calling professionally, she delights in exploring foreign countries, rolling hillsides, and new cultures. And as a young single woman, she has grown used to experiencing life on her own. But all of that changes when, on one bright spring afternoon in West Belfast, Vivian's path collides with Johnny and culminates in a horrifying act of violence. In the aftermath of the incident, both Johnny and Vivian are forced to confront the chain of events that led to the attack. Vivian must struggle to recapture the woman that she was and the woman she aspired to be, while dealing with a culture and judicial system that treats assault victims as less than human. Johnny, meanwhile, flees to the sanctity of his transitory Irish clan. But when he is finally brought to reckon for his crimes, Vivian learns that justice is not always as swift or as fair as she would hopeSome Remarks: Essays and Other Writing
By Neal Stephenson. 2012
#1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson is, quite simply, one of the best and most respected writers alive.…
He’s taken sf to places it’s never been (Snow Crash, Anathem). He’s reinvented the historical novel (The Baroque Cycle), the international thriller (Reamde), and both at the same time (Cryptonomicon).Now he treats his legion of fans to Some Remarks, an enthralling collection of essays—Stephenson’s first nonfiction work since his long essay on technology, In the Beginning…Was the Command Line, more than a decade ago—as well as new and previously published short writings both fiction and non.Some Remarks is a magnificent showcase of a brilliantly inventive mind and talent, as he discourses on everything from Sir Isaac Newton to Star Wars.Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women and Notes on Media
By Nora Ephron. 2013
Two classic collections of Nora Ephron's uproarious essaystackling everything from feminism to the media, from politics to beauty products, with…
her inimitable charm and distinctive witnow available in one audiobook. This edition brings together some of Ephron's most famous writing on a generation of women (and men) who helped shape the way we live now, and on events ranging from the Watergate scandal to the Pillsbury Bake-Off. In these sharp, hilariously entertaining, and vividly observed pieces, Ephron illuminates an era with wicked honesty and insight. From the famous "A Few Words About Breasts" to important pieces on her time working for the New York Post and Gourmet Magazine, these essays show Ephron at her very best. Permissions: "To a Too Much Unfortunate Lady", from THE PORTABLE DOROTHY PARKER by Dorothy Parker, edited by Marion Meade, copyright 1928, renewed (c) 1956 by Dorothy Parker; copyright (c) 1973, 2006 by The National Assoc. for the Advancement of Colored People. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories
By Chuck Palahniuk. 2006
From the bestselling author of Fight Club and Diary, a collection of essays and journalistic pieces that prove that real…
life has imagination beaten cold in the strangeness and wonder departments Chuck Palahniuk's world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. The pieces that comprise Stranger Than Fiction, his first nonfiction collection, prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling. Encounters with alternative culture heroes Marilyn Manson and Juliette Lewis; the peculiar wages of fame attendant on the big budget film production of the movie Fight Club; life as an assembly-line drive train installer by day, hospice volunteer driver by night; the really peculiar lives of submariners; the really violent world (and mangled ears) of college wrestlers; the underground world of iron-pumping anabolic steroid gobblers; the immensely upsetting circumstances of his father's murder and the trial of his killer-each essay or vignette offers a unique facet of existence as lived in and/or observed by one of our most flagrantly daring and original literary talents.Living in a state of shock and self-loathing, it took her years of struggle to confront the buried memories of…
that first attack and begin to undo the damage it wrought, as men continued to take advantage of her fragility in the worst possible way. Yet, after growing up with a burden no teenager should ever have to shoulder, she found the heart to carry out the best revenge plan of all: leading a fulfilling and happy life. But the road to piecing her life back together was long and painful. For Madeleine, forgiveness was the key. True forgiveness takes genuine effort. It takes a real desire to understand those who have done us so much harm. It is the ultimate act of courage. In Unbroken, Madeleine tells her deeply moving and empowering story, as she discovers that life is about how a person chooses to recover from adversity.Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers
By Susan Scott. 2019
BODY & SOUL: STORIES FOR SKEPTICS AND SEEKERS is a spiritual journey through experiences that can be liberating but also…
awkward and sometimes even dangerous, because women are so often excluded from conversations about spirituality. Liberation comes with breaking that age-old code of silence to talk about the messiness of faith, practice, religion and ceremony, to confess our sublimely unconventional modes of spiritual yearning. The writers in this volume, including Sharon Bala, Carleigh Baker, Eufemia Fantetti, Sue Goyette, K.D. Miller, Zarqa Nawaz, Alison Pick, Sigal Samuel, Ayelet Tsabari, Betsy Warland and others, many from marginalized or misunderstood communities, are speaking out so that others will speak up. Enough of fear. Enough of hiding out, tongue-tied. It's time for joy, humanity and frankness. It's time to step up and lead--not by running after answers, but by asking caring, daring questions. It's time for body and soul.Resilience Is Futile: The Life and Death and Life of Julie Lalonde
By Julie S. Lalonde. 2020
For over a decade, Julie Lalonde, an award-winning advocate for women’s rights, kept a secret. She crisscrossed the country, denouncing…
violence against women and giving hundreds of media interviews along the way. Her work made national headlines for challenging universities and taking on Canada’s top military brass. Appearing fearless on the surface, Julie met every interview and event with the same fear in her gut: was he there?Fleeing intimate partner violence at age 20, Julie was stalked by her ex-partner for over ten years, rarely mentioning it to friends, let alone addressing it publicly. The contrast between her public career as a brave champion for women with her own private life of violence and fear meant a shaky and exhausting balancing act.Resilience sounds like a positive thing, so why do we often use it against women? Tenacity and bravery might help us survive unimaginable horrors, but where are the spaces for anger and vulnerability?Resilience is Futile is a story of survival, courage and ultimately, hope. But it’s also a challenge to the ways we understand trauma and resilience. It’s the story of one survivor who won’t give up and refuses to shut up.Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body
By Rebekah Taussig. 2020
A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to…
paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.Nothing that Is, The: Essays on Art, Literature and Being (Essais Series #9)
By Johanna Skibsrud. 2019
Rather than making "something" out of "nothing," what follows is an endeavour to express the potential of language and thought…
to encounter what is infinitely beyond both yet to be imagined.In The Nothing That Is, Johanna Skibsrud gathers essays about the very concept of "nothing." Addressing a broad range of topics—including false atrocity tales, so-called fake news, high-wire acts, and telepathy, as well as responses to works by John Ashbery, Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, and more—these essays seek to decentre our relationship to both the "givenness" of history and to a predictive or probable model of the future.The Nothing That Is explores ways in which poetic language can activate the possibilities replete within our every moment. Skibsrud reveals that within every encounter between a speaking "I" and what exceeds subjectivity, there is a listening "Other," be it community or the objective world.Praise for The Nothing That Is:"Skibsrud adds brilliantly to what we can know of poetry. By entering into the words of Woolf, Oppen, Stephens, Rukeyser, Carson and others, and thinking in our presence, she gives us the experience of touch and beauty and the poem. A friend to Burke's sublime and to Pato?s at the limit, this book urges us to receive poetry's "nothing" for here an abundance lives. Put The Nothing That Is into the hands of whoever is puzzled by or afraid of poetry, into the hands of whoever teaches it!" —Erín Moure"Why do I find Skibsrud's consideration of Nothing essentially hopeful? Because her approach to the possibilities of thinking Nothing arise out of, and include, the despair of Celan's babble—which is to say the incomprehensible, a place where all known structures, including language, have fallen away. Skibsrud invites us to participate in the very human process of re-seeing and remaking the world; she challenges us to venture with her into the unknown, where experience and language empty themselves, then create themselves anew." —Sam Ace, author of Our Weather Our Sea"At some point in my relationship with The Nothing That Is I began to forget that I was reading a collection of essays on art, language, and being, and began, instead, to believe that I was reading a guidebook on how to approach and appreciate outer space. Because, in her recuperative and intimate readings of the often despairing, always life-affirming schisms between what is expressed and what remains inexpressible, Johanna Skibsrud has written a manifesto of liminal, reverberative space, as essential to our understanding of poetry and art, as to that of black holes and the Milky Way." —Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the WallThe nicotine chronicles (Akashic Drug Chronicles Ser.)
By Lee Child. 2020
Inspired by the ongoing international success of the city-based Akashic Noir Series ( Brooklyn Noir, Boston Noir, Paris Noir ,…
etc.), Akashic created the Drug Chronicles Series in 2011. Following The Speed Chronicles (William T. Vollmann, Megan Abbott), The Cocaine Chronicles (Lee Child, Laura Lippman), The Heroin Chronicles (Jerry Stahl, Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch), and The Marijuana Chronicles (Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates) comes The Nicotine Chronicles , masterfully curated by blockbuster hit maker Lee Child. In recent years, nicotine has become as verboten as many hard drugs. The literary styles in this volume are as varied as the moral quandaries herein, and the authors have successfully unleashed their incandescent imaginations on the subject matter, fashioning an immensely addictive collection. Featuring brand-new stories by: Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Ames, Eric Bogosian, Achy Obejas, Michael Imperioli, Hannah Tinti, Ariel Gore, Bernice L. McFadden, Cara Black, Christopher Sorrentino, David L. Ulin, Jerry Stahl, Lauren Sanders, Peter Kimani, and Robert Arellano