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Showing 161 - 180 of 3409 items
By Maia Szalavitz. 2017
A journalist examines the psychology of addiction, arguing that it is a developmental disorder rooted in learned behavior rather than…
a brain disease. She looks at its causes and cures and shares her own experience with drug addiction and recovery. 2016By Benjamin Perrin. 2020
NATIONAL BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED for the 2021 BC Book Awards' George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in LiteratureSHORTLISTED for the BC and…
Yukon Book Prizes, for both the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and Jim Deva Prize for Writing That ProvokesSHORTLISTED for the 2021 J. W. Dafoe Book Prize“Overdose is a necessary and searching investigation into a devastating epidemic that should never have happened. Benjamin Perrin painstakingly shows that it need not continue if we, as a society, heed the evidence.”—Gabor Maté M.D., author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With AddictionAn astonishing and powerful look at the ongoing opioid crisis North America is in the middle of a health emergency. Life expectancies are declining. Someone is dying every two hours in Canada from illicit drug overdose. Fentanyl has become a looming presence—an opioid more powerful, pervasive, and deadly than any previous street drug. The victims are many—and often not whom we might expect. They include the poor and forgotten but also our neighbours: professionals, students, and parents. Despite the thousands of deaths, these victims have remained largely invisible. But not anymore. Benjamin Perrin, a law and policy expert, shines a light in this darkest of corners—and his findings challenge many assumptions about the crisis. Why do people use drugs despite the risk of overdosing? Can we crack down on the fentanyl supply? Do supervised consumption sites and providing “safe drugs” enable the problem? Which treatments work? Would decriminalizing all drugs help or do further harm? In this urgent and humane look at a devastating epidemic, Perrin draws on behind-the-scenes interviews with those on the frontlines, including undercover police officers, intelligence analysts, border agents, prosecutors, healthcare professionals, Indigenous organizations, activists, and people who use drugs. Not only does he unveil the many complexities of this situation, but he also offers a new way forward—one that may save thousands of lives.By Anita Hill. 2021
&“An elegant, impassioned demand that America see gender-based violence as a cultural and structural problem that hurts everyone, not just…
victims and survivors… It's at times downright virtuosic in the threads it weaves together.&”—NPR From the woman who gave the landmark testimony against Clarence Thomas as a sexual menace, a new manifesto about the origins and course of gender violence in our society; a combination of memoir, personal accounts, law, and social analysis, and a powerful call to arms from one of our most prominent and poised survivors. In 1991, Anita Hill began something that's still unfinished work. The issues of gender violence, touching on sex, race, age, and power, are as urgent today as they were when she first testified. Believing is a story of America's three decades long reckoning with gender violence, one that offers insights into its roots, and paths to creating dialogue and substantive change. It is a call to action that offers guidance based on what this brave, committed fighter has learned from a lifetime of advocacy and her search for solutions to a problem that is still tearing America apart. We once thought gender-based violence—from casual harassment to rape and murder—was an individual problem that affected a few; we now know it's cultural and endemic, and happens to our acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family members, and it can be physical, emotional and verbal. Women of color experience sexual harassment at higher rates than White women. Street harassment is ubiquitous and can escalate to violence. Transgender and nonbinary people are particularly vulnerable. Anita Hill draws on her years as a teacher, legal scholar, and advocate, and on the experiences of the thousands of individuals who have told her their stories, to trace the pipeline of behavior that follows individuals from place to place: from home to school to work and back home. In measured, clear, blunt terms, she demonstrates the impact it has on every aspect of our lives, including our physical and mental wellbeing, housing stability, political participation, economy and community safety, and how our descriptive language undermines progress toward solutions. And she is uncompromising in her demands that our laws and our leaders must address the issue concretely and immediatelyBy Rachel Vogelstein. 2021
Bringing together political analysis and powerful storytelling from some of the most dangerous places in the world to be a…
woman, Awakening chronicles the remarkable global impact of the #MeToo movement. Since 2017, millions have joined the global movement known as #MeToo, catalyzing an unprecedented wave of women's activism and powered by technology that reaches across borders, races, religions, and economic divides. Today, women in more than 100 countries are using the hashtag to fight the violence and discrimination they face—and winning. What started as an online campaign against sexual harassment has triggered the most widespread cultural reckoning on women's rights in history, with global implications for women's participation in the economy, politics, and across social and cultural life. Awakening: #MeToo & the Global Fight for Women's Rights is the first book to capture the global impact of this breakthrough movement. Bringing together political analysis and powerful storytelling from seven countries—Brazil, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sweden, and Tunisia— Awakening takes readers to the front lines of a networked movement that's fundamentally shifting how women organize for their own equalityBy Anna Qu. 2021
A young girl forced to work in a Queens sweatshop calls child services on her mother in this powerful debut…
memoir about labor and self-worth that traces a Chinese immigrant&’s journey to an American future. As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family&’s garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their new country. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly twenty years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, and on the brink of losing her job as the once-shiny start-up collapses, Qu looks once more at her life&’s truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work. Traveling from Wenzhou to Xi&’an to New York, Made in China is a fierce memoir unafraid to ask thorny questions about trauma and survival in immigrant families, the meaning of work, and the costs of immigrationBy Bernie Saunders. 2021
Shut Out is a hockey love story. But it's a love that was unrequited. Bernie Saunders had a passion for…
hockey. His prodigious talent was on display at all levels. But because he was Black, he was stymied at every turn and experienced nothing but taunting from opponents, spectators, coaches and even his own teammates. Despite this malevolence, Saunders continued to play, adopting a style akin to that of the historic house slave: serve but remain invisible. Signed by the Quebec Nordiques, he played with them for two years, but spent most of his career playing collegiately at Western Michigan University and in the minor leagues in Canada and the US. In the end, it was all too much for Saunders. Dogged and overwhelmed by racism, he finally left hockey to work in the corporate sector. This is a memoir about professional hockey by a player who had the potential to become a star but was blocked at almost every opportunity because of his race. In spite of this, Shut Out is a hopeful and uplifting book about facing adversity, overcoming it and moving ahead. Woven throughout the book is Saunders's love of his family, especially his brother, John, who died at age sixty-one. Now retired, Bernie Saunders is still sought out by the hockey community for his observations and adviceBy Tarana Burke. 2021
"Tarana Burke, I just finished Unbound . Searing. Powerful. Needed!! Thank you." —Oprah This program is read by the author.…
From the founder and activist behind one of the largest movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the "me too" movement, Tarana Burke debuts a powerful memoir about her own journey to saying those two simple yet infinitely powerful words — me too — and how she brought empathy back to an entire generation in one of the largest cultural events in American history. Tarana didn't always have the courage to say "me too." As a child, she reeled from her sexual assault, believing she was responsible. Unable to confess what she thought of as her own sins for fear of shattering her family, her soul split in two. One side was the bright, intellectually curious third generation Bronxite steeped in Black literature and power, and the other was the bad, shame ridden girl who thought of herself as a vile rule breaker, not of a victim. She tucked one away, hidden behind a wall of pain and anger, which seemed to work...until it didn't. Tarana fought to reunite her fractured soul, through organizing, pursuing justice, and finding community. In her debut memoir she shares her extensive work supporting and empowering Black and brown girls, and the devastating realization that to truly help these girls she needed to help that scared, ashamed child still in her soul. She needed to stop running and confront what had happened to her, for Heaven and Diamond and the countless other young Black women for whom she cared. They gave her the courage to embrace her power. A power which in turn she shared with the entire world. Through these young Black and brown women, Tarana found that we can only offer empathy to others if we first offer it to ourselves. Unbound is the story of an inimitable woman's inner strength and perseverance, all in pursuit of bringing healing to her community and the world around her, but it is also a story of possibility, of empathy, of power, and of the leader we all have inside ourselves. In sharing her path toward healing and saying "me too," Tarana reaches out a hand to help us all on our own journeys. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books " Sometimes a single story can change the world. Unbound is one of those stories. Tarana's words are a testimony to liberation and love." —Brené Brown "Burke's Unbound is worthy of being considered next to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as one of those rare books that will unfold and welcome parts of us we thought we'd completely hid until the earth is gone. Unbound is the one we readers and writers have been waiting for. " —Kiese Laymon , author of Heavy "Tarana Burke is the most important voice of our generation and Unbound is an offering that will set free hearts, families, and communities. I will never stop being grateful for Tarana Burke's wisdom and courage—and I will never stop thinking about this book. " —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of UntamedBy Michael Pollan. 2021
The instant New York Times bestseller &“Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about…
drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.&”— New York Times Book Review From #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants—and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a &“drug&”? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? In This Is Your Mind on Plants , Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs—opium, caffeine, and mescaline—and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings? In this unique blend of history, science, and memoir, as well as participatory journalism, Pollan examines and experiences these plants from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively—as a drug, whether licit or illicit. But that is one of the least interesting things you can say about these plants, Pollan shows, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. Based in part on an essay published almost twenty-five years ago, this groundbreaking and singular consideration of psychoactive plants, and our attraction to them through time, holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds, and our entanglement with the natural worldBy Sean Fitz-Gerald. 2019
A love letter to a sport that's losing itself, from one of Canada's best sports writers.Canadian hockey is approaching a…
state of crisis. It's become more expensive, more exclusive, and effectively off-limits to huge swaths of the potential sports-loving population. Youth registration numbers are stagnant; efforts to appeal to new Canadians are often grim at best; the game, increasingly, does not resemble the country of which it's for so long been an integral part. These signs worried Sean Fitz-Gerald. As a lifelong hockey fan and father of a young mixed-race son falling headlong in love with the game, he wanted to get to the roots of these issues. His entry point: a season with the Peterborough Petes, a storied OHL team far from its former glory in a once-emblematic Canadian city that is finding itself on the wrong side of the country's changing demographics. Fitz-Gerald profiles the players, coaches and front office staff, a mix of world-class talents with NHL aspirations and Peterborough natives happy with more modest dreams. Through their experiences, their widely varied motivations and expectations, we get a rich, colourful understanding of who ends up playing hockey in Canada and why. Fitz-Gerald interweaves the action of the season with portraits of public figures who've shaped and been shaped by the game: authors who captured its spirit, politicians who exploited it, and broadcasters who try to embody and sell it. He finds his way into community meetings full of angry season ticket holders, as well as into sterile boardrooms full of the sport's institutional brain trust, unable to break away from the inertia of tradition and hopelessly at war with itself. Before the Lights Go Out is a moving, funny, yet unsettling picture of a sport at a crossroads. Fitz-Gerald's warm but rigorous journalistic approach reads, in the end, like a letter to a troubled friend: it's not too late to save hockey in this country, but who has the will to do it?By Marilee Strong, Jeffrey L. Rinek. 2018
Former FBI agent recounts his career working on cases of kidnapped and murdered children. Discusses investigative techniques, the ways the…
FBI interacts with other agencies, and sensational crimes such as the 1999 Yosemite National Park murders. Relates the psychological effects on him, including suicide attempts, and his family. Violence. 2018By Johnny Kovatch. 2018
Chronicles the fifty-nine hours from August 6, 2000, when fifteen-year-old Nicholas Markowitz was kidnapped, to his eventual murder after midnight…
on August 9th. Recounts the trial and life after for the family and criminals. Some violence and some strong language. For senior high and older readers. 2018By Jesse P. Pollack. 2018
True story of the murder of Long Island teen Gary Lauwers by Ricky Kasso in 1984, called a "Satanic sacrifice"…
by the international media. Recounts the case and America's War on Drugs campaign. Violence and strong language. For senior high and older readers. 2018By Rachel Louise Snyder. 2019
Journalist examines the impact of domestic violence on American culture. Discusses the experiences of victims and perpetrators, effects on the…
greater community, known statistics and reasons why incidents are not reported, and government policies and programs implemented to combat it. Violence and strong language. 2019By Leslie Wells, Michael Sanders, Paul A. Mones. 1991
Attorney presents eight case studies of children convicted of killing their parents. Discusses the motivations for the killings, the legal…
cases against the children, and the effects of abuse and killing on the children and their communities. Violence, strong language, and explicit descriptions of sex. 1991By Tim Cowlishaw. 2013
A sportswriter and ESPN host discusses how he tackled his alcohol addiction. He shares stories of his career, including anecdotes…
of the many star athletes he has known. But he also relates how he finally confronted his drinking problem after being arrested for drunk driving. Some strong language. 2013By Shaun Whiteside, Norman Ohler. 2017
Examination of the use of drugs during the rule of the Nazi Party. Discusses Hitler's personal physician, Theodor Morell; the…
impact of drug use in the military on specific operations; and more. Translated from the original 2015 German edition. Bestseller. 2017By Katherine Nichols. 2017
In 1971, seventeen-year-old Eddie Otero, a skilled waterman and avid surfer, agreed to swim an illicit package across the border…
from Mexico. The author recounts how this one-time thrill turned into a million-dollar drug-smuggling operation. Some violence and some strong language. For senior high and older readers. 2017By Amy Liptrot. 2017
Memoir of returning to live on the Orkney Islands, northeast of mainland Scotland. Discusses her family life, including her manic-depressive…
father; leaving the islands to live in London, where she realizes she's an alcoholic; and coming to terms with her past while surrounded by the Orkneys' raw beauty. 2016By James Rhodes. 2017
Sexually abused as a child, a classical pianist describes how music saved him from a life of drug abuse and…
mental wards. Organized around classical music pieces important to him, he discusses his career and his efforts to process the traumas of his youth. Violence, strong language, and descriptions of sex. 2014By Leslie L. Iversen. 2001
The history of drugs, the various ways they work, and how new ones are developed, tested, and marketed. Focuses on…
pharmaceuticals--including pain relievers, antibiotics, and psychiatric drugs--but also includes discussion of legal and illegal recreational drugs. 2016