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Showing 1 - 20 of 529 items
By Dustin Galer. 2023
The story of a mid-century working-class housewife whose extraordinary physical transformation empowered her to become a dynamic social activist who…
fueled a movement to create a more inclusive future for people with disabilities.By Jessica J. Lee. 2024
INSTANT TORONTO STAR BESTSELLERThe prize-winning and bestselling author of Two Trees Make a Forest turns to the lives of plants…
entangled in our human world to explore belonging, displacement, identity, and the truths of our shared futureA seed slips beyond a garden wall. A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen from its culture and its land. What happens when these plants leave their original homes and put down roots elsewhere?The themes in these fourteen essays become invigorating and intimate in Lee’s hands, centering on the lives of plants like seaweed, tangelos, and soy, and their entanglement with our human worlds. Lee explores the rich backstory of cherry trees in Berlin; a tea plant that grows in the Himalayan foothills just southwest of China; the world of algae and wakame, and the journeys they’ve made to reach us.Each of the plants considered in this collection are somehow perceived as being "out of place"—weeds, samples collected through imperial science, crops introduced and transformed by our hand. Lee looks at these plant species in their own context, even when we find them outside of it.Dispersals draws a gorgeous, sprawling map of the diaspora of flora. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong, why both cross borders, and how our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.By Denise Chong. 2024
From the bestselling author of The Concubine’s Children and The Girl in the Picture, a gripping story of a domestic…
assault that shocked the world, of the exercise of power and political influence, and of the Bangladeshi woman whose irrepressible spirit found light in sudden darkness.From the outside, Rumana seemed an unlikely victim of domestic abuse: married to a man of her own choosing and progressing in her career as a professor of international relations at Dhaka University. But in 2011, on return from graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, her husband attacked and blinded her in front of their young daughter. As Rumana's horrifying story garnered international headlines, and connections brought her to Vancouver in an attempt—ultimately futile—to restore her sight, her plight underscored the fact that there are no typical victims of intimate-partner violence. Denise Chong goes behind the headlines to reveal the devolution of a love story into a tale of tyranny behind closed doors, and the pursuit of justice that proved all the more elusive during the rise of social media. Out of Darkness tells a globe-spanning narrative of loyalty, perseverance and a woman’s determination to face the future and rebuild a life with meaning.By Salman Rushdie. 2024
From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on…
his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.By Beth Nguyen. 2023
Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily Selected by Time , NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book…
of 2023 "This book...is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be." —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha's Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement. At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Beth's mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together. Owner of a Lonely Heart is "a portrait of things left unsaid" ( The New York Times ), a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth's relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years—sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sister—Beth tells an "unforgettable" ( People ) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthoodBy David Gibbins. 2024
The Viking warship of King Cnut the Great. Henry VIII's the Mary Rose. Captain John Franklin's doomed HMS Terror. The…
SS Gairsoppa, destroyed by a Nazi U-boat in the Atlantic during World War II. Since we first set sail on the open sea, ships and their wrecks have been an inevitable part of human history. Archaeologists have made spectacular discoveries excavating these sunken ships, their protective underwater cocoon keeping evidence of past civilizations preserved. World renowned maritime archeologist David Gibbins ties together the stories of some of the most significant shipwrecks in time to form a single overarching narrative of world history. A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks is not just the story of those ships, the people who sailed on them, and the cargo and treasure they carried, but also the story of the spread of people, religion, and ideas around the world; it is a story of colonialism, migration, and the indominable human spirit that continues today. Drawing on decades of experience, Gibbins reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past that tell a new story about the world and its underwater secretsBy Sami Nouri. 2022
À l'âge de 5 ans, Sami Nouri fuit avec sa famille le régime des talibans, trouvant refuge en Iran puis…
en Europe dans des conditions particulièrement éprouvantes. À 14 ans, il arrive seul en France, ne parle pas la langue, est déplacé de foyer en foyer. Un jour, son talent de couturier est découvert. À 27 ans, il est styliste et a fondé sa propre maison de haute coutureBy Charles Haroche. 2021
Revenant sur la vie et la carrière de Roger Federer, l'auteur explique comment et pourquoi le tennisman est devenu un…
véritable mythe, convoquant au passage des références mythologiques, cinématographiques, religieuses, philosophiques, littéraires, artistiques ou psychologiquesBy Erin Frankel. 2024
Jos©♭ Andr©♭s's love of cooking began as a young boy in Spain as he gathered the wood to make the…
fire that would cook the paella just right. Jos©♭ loved everything about it: the sizzling olive oil, the mounds of chopped vegetables, and the smell of saffron. When he left home, he realized he wanted to tell stories with food. And tell them he did, creating magic with the seeds of ripe tomatoes and pomegranates and cheese. His dreams grew until they were as big as the stars in the sky. He thought No one should ever go hungry. I want to help feed the world—and World Central Kitchen was born. From the earthquake in Haiti to the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic, Jos©♭ and his team at World Central Kitchen have been at the frontlines, serving more than 200 million meals and counting, and bringing comfort and hope in the darkest times. With its lyrical text, this biography about a world-renowned humanitarian and chef is sure to inspire a new generation of community helpersBy Christian Tétreault. 2023
Un criminaliste flamboyant, les pires bandits de l'histoire judiciaire du Québec: Bienvenue dans l'univers Maranda. Avocat de génie qui tétanisait…
la partie adverse et imposait le respect aux juges les plus coriaces, ardent défenseur des droits et libertés fasciné par le parcours des hors-la-loi qu'il représentait, homme respectable que l'amour a traîné sur le banc des accusés: Léo-René Maranda (1932-2012) était la complexité faite homme. Découvrir l'univers Maranda, c'est plonger dans une époque révolue où les figures mythiques de Brian Erb, Richard Foley, Monica-la-mitraille, Gérard Fontaine, Donald Côté et Alain Charron couraient encore les rues, protégées par la verve de leur éblouissant défenseurBy Jill Biden. 2022
Mémoires de l'épouse de Joe Biden, qu'elle épouse en secondes noces en 1977. Enseignante d'anglais et d'histoire au lycée, elle…
conserve son métier lors de la vice-présidence de son mari sous les mandats d'Obama puis lorsque Biden accède lui-même au bureau ovale. Elle retrace son parcours, ses liens avec son mari et les enfants issus de son premier mariage, dont Beau, décédé en 2015By Ariane Lacoursière. 2023
"J'ai défendu des milliers de gens dans ma carrière. Dont certains avaient des revenus modestes. Dans ce contexte-là, j'ai rencontré…
beaucoup de gens qui ont été pour moi des gens extraordinaires et significatifs en termes de personne. Chacune de ces personnes et de ces groupes a été pour moi tout au long de mon parcours professionnel une véritable inspiration qui m'a soutenue dans les moments difficiles lorsque j'affrontais des adversaires plus redoutables que les autres. Sans eux pour m'inspirer et me soutenir, je ne pense pas que j'aurais eu autant de satisfaction à pratiquer mon métier.'' Discours de Jean-Pierre Ménard lors de la remise de la Médaille du Barreau, en avril 2022By Rebel Wilson. 2024
From the scene-stealing star of Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids comes a refreshingly candid, hilarious, and inspiring book about her unconventional…
journey to Hollywood success and loving herself.For decades, Rebel Wilson had single-mindedly focused on her career, making a name for herself through her iconic roles in Pitch Perfect, Bridesmaids, and Isn&’t It Romantic. Now, she&’s ready to chronicle the emotional and physical lessons she learned, as well as her most embarrassing experiences. A malaria-induced hallucination? An all-style martial arts fighting tournament? Junior handling at dog shows? And this was all BEFORE she moved to Hollywood! Rebel Rising follows Rebel Wilson&’s incredible journey of &“making it,&” constantly questioning, &“Am I good enough? Will I ever find love? Will I ever change and become healthy?&” Rebel writes for the first time about the most personal and important moments in her life—from fertility issues, weight gain and loss, sexuality, overcoming shyness, rejections, and, well...okay there&’s at least one story thrown in about Brad Pitt! It&’s all here. This memoir shows us how to love ourselves while making us laugh uncontrollably.By Shing Yin Khor, Who Hq. 2024
Discover what life was really like during the California Gold Rush in this powerful graphic novel written by National Book…
Award finalist and Eisner Award-winning creator Shing Yin Khor and illustrated by Kass Gray.Presenting Who HQ Graphic Novels: an exciting addition to the #1 New York Times best-selling Who Was? series!Explore the Gold Rush from the perspective of William Miller and Henry Garrison, two miners in the Sierra Nevada region, and uncover the often unrelenting conditions of the California gold mines. A story of community, determination, and the search for the American Dream, this graphic novel invites readers to immerse themselves into what life was really like during this pivotal period in American history--brought to life by gripping narrative and vivid full-color illustrations that jump off the page.By Paul R. Viotti. 2024
Kenneth Waltz (1924–2013) is perhaps the most enduringly influential figure in international relations theory of the second half of the…
twentieth century. He is considered the father of the structural-realist or neorealist school, and his views on core questions, such as the causes of war and the structure of the international system, are foundational to the field today and likely will remain so for decades to come. Waltz’s writings on both theoretical and policy-related topics, from the balance of power to the spread of nuclear weapons, continue to fuel debate.This book is a groundbreaking intellectual biography of Kenneth Waltz, shedding new light on the development and significance of his key contributions. Paul R. Viotti draws on extensive, candid interviews with Waltz as well as Waltz’s personal files and archival research to provide a nuanced account of the great scholar’s life and thought. He traces the intellectual sources and personal experiences that shaped Waltz’s work, including an intense Lutheran upbringing; service in World War II and the Korean War; and the academic environments of Oberlin College, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Viotti examines the key influences on Waltz’s major works, Man, the State, and War and Theory of International Politics, and analyzes their distinctive insights. Engaging with the views of Waltz’s critics and featuring reminiscences from his colleagues, this book is a compelling portrait of an intellectual titan.By Stefanos Geroulanos. 2024
“[A]n incisive and captivating reassessment of prehistory . . . In lucid prose, Geroulanos unspools an enthralling and detailed history…
of the development of modern natural science. It’s a must-read.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “An astute, powerfully rendered history of humanity.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review An eminent historian tells the story of how we came to obsess over the origins of humanity—and how, for three centuries, ideas of prehistory have been used to justify devastating violence against others. Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world. The very idea that there was a human past before recorded history only emerged with the Enlightenment, when European thinkers began to reject faith-based notions of humanity and history in favor of supposedly more empirical ideas about the world. From the “state of nature” and Romantic notions of virtuous German barbarians to theories about Neanderthals, killer apes, and a matriarchal paradise where women ruled, Geroulanos captures the sheer variety and strangeness of the ideas that animated many of the major thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin, and Karl Marx. Yet as Geroulanos shows, such ideas became, for the most part, the ideological foundations of repressive regimes and globe-spanning empires. Deeming other peoples “savages” allowed for guilt-free violence against them; notions of “killer apes” who were our evolutionary predecessors made war seem natural. The emergence of modern science only accelerated the West’s imperialism. The Nazi obsession with race was rooted in archaeological claims about prehistoric IndoGermans; the idea that colonialized peoples could be “bombed back to the Stone Age” was made possible by the technology of flight and the anthropological idea that civilization advanced in stages. As Geroulanos argues, accounts of prehistory tell us more about the moment when they are proposed than about the deep past—and if we hope to start improving our future, we would be better off setting aside the search for how it all started. A necessary, timely, indelible account of how the quest for understanding the origins of humanity became the handmaiden of war and empire, The Invention of Prehistory will forever change how we think about the deep past.By Elijah Wald. 2024
A bestselling music historian follows Jelly Roll Morton on a journey through the hidden worlds and forbidden songs of early…
blues and jazz. In Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories, Elijah Wald takes readers on a journey into the hidden and censored world of early blues and jazz, guided by the legendary New Orleans pianist Jelly Roll Morton. Morton became nationally famous as a composer and bandleader in the 1920s, but got his start twenty years earlier, entertaining customers in the city&’s famous bordellos and singing rough blues in Gulf Coast honky-tonks. He recorded an oral history of that time in 1938, but the most distinctive songs were hidden away for over fifty years, because the language and themes were as wild and raunchy as anything in gangsta rap. Those songs inspired Wald to explore how much other history had been locked away and censored, and this book is the result of that quest. Full of previously unpublished lyrics and stories, it paints a new and surprising picture of the dawn of American popular music, when jazz and blues were still the private, after-hours music of the Black "sporting world." It gives new insight into familiar figures like Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong, and introduces forgotten characters like Ready Money, the New Orleans sex worker and pickpocket who ended up owning one of the largest Black hotels on the West Coast. Revelatory and fascinating, these songs and stories provide an alternate view of Black culture at the turn of the twentieth century, when a new generation was shaping lives their parents could not have imagined and art that transformed popular culture around the world—the birth of a joyous, angry, desperate, loving, and ferociously funny tradition that resurfaced in hip-hop and continues to inspire young artists in a new millennium.By D. Rae Gould, Holly Herbster, Heather Law Pezzarossi, Steve A. Mrozowski. 2020
Society for American Archaeology Scholarly Book AwardCollaborative archaeological projects focused on the Nipmuc people of New England that offer a…
model for research incorporating Indigenous knowledge and scholarship Highlighting the strong relationship between New England’s Nipmuc people and their land from the pre-contact period to the present day, this book helps demonstrate that the history of Native Americans did not end with the arrival of Europeans. This is the rich result of a twenty-year collaboration between indigenous and nonindigenous authors, who use their own example to argue that Native peoples need to be integral to any research project focused on indigenous history and culture. The stories traced in this book center around three Nipmuc archaeological sites in Massachusetts—the seventeenth century town of Magunkaquog, the Sarah Boston Farmstead in Hassanamesit Woods, and the Cisco Homestead on the Hassanamisco Reservation. The authors bring together indigenous oral histories, historical documents, and archaeological evidence to show how the Nipmuc people outlasted armed conflict and Christianization efforts instigated by European colonists. Exploring key issues of continuity, authenticity, and identity, Historical Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration provides a model for research projects that seek to incorporate indigenous knowledge and scholarship.'A vastly entertaining tale, bursting with astonishing stories and extraordinary characters ... A fascinating read' Sunday Telegraph'Brilliant ... An amazing…
story, one I hadn't heard too much about' Dan SnowIT IS THE DEPTHS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR.The Germans like to boast that there is 'no escape' from the infamous fortress that is Colditz.The elite British officers imprisoned there are determined to prove the Nazis wrong and get back into the war.As the war heats up and the stakes are raised, the Gestapo plant a double-agent inside the prison in a bid to uncover the secrets of the British prisoners. Captain Julius Green of the Army Dental Corps and Sergeant John 'Busty' Brown must risk their lives in a bid to save the lives of hundreds of Allied servicemen and protect the secrets of MI9.Drawn from unseen records, The Traitor of Colditz brings to light an extraordinary, never-before-told story from the Second World War, an epic tale of how MI9 took on the Nazis and exposed the traitors in their midst.By Peter Boehm. 2014
AFRICA ASKEW was in the Top Ten of the German Amazon Travel&Adventure section for almost a year.Peter Boehm travelled right…
across Africa, in speeding SUVs, rickety buses and dilapidated trains. He travelled for almost six months, over 6,000 miles, through nine countries – Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Senegal.The journey was breathtaking and nerve-shattering, but never dull. The people he met were exciting, bizarre and pathetic, but they never leave you cold. In Somali, Peter Boehm describes psychiatrists who consider all their compatriots to be mad – as do the Somalis themselves and, in the end, even the author thinks he’s mad too! In Sudan, he meets doctors who re-seal women; in Chad there are street kids already sitting on their suitcases, awaiting the journey to Germany; in Mali he meets traditional healers who are, at the same time, GPs, best friends, and agony aunts; in Nigeria there are traditional leaders whose subjects throw themselves on the ground before them, and Islamic judges who savour the whippings they’ve ordered as one would a high-quality wine.For good measure, Peter Boehm has kept a record of the troubles and transformations of a European in Africa.Peter Boehm’s tone is laconic, and free of any sentimentality. You’ll never have read about Africa like this before.