Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 1015 items
Why She Wrote: A Graphic History of the Lives, Inspiration, and Influence Behind the Pens of Classic Women Writers
By Lauren Burke, Hannah K. Chapman. 2021
In Why She Wrote, dive into the fascinating, unexpected, and inspiring stories behind the greatest women writers in the English…
language.This compelling graphic collection features 18 women—including Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Anne Lister, and more—and asks a simple question: in a time when being a woman writer often meant being undervalued, overlooked, or pigeonholed, why did she write?Why did Jane Austen struggle to write for five years before her first novel was ever published? How did Edith Maude Eaton's writing change the narrative around Chinese immigrant workers in North America? Why did the Brontë sisters choose to write under male pennames, and Anne Lister write her personal diaries in code?Learn about women writers from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, from familiar favorites to those who have undeservedly fallen into obscurity, and their often untold histories, including:• The forgotten mother of the gothic genre• The unexpected success of Little Women• The diaries of the "first modern lesbian"• The lawsuit to protect Little Lord Fauntleroy• The personal account of a mastectomy in 1811• Austen's struggles with writer's block• And much, much more!Why She Wrote highlights a significant moment from each writer's life and retells it through engaging and accessible comics, along with biographical text, bibliographies, and fun facts. For aspiring writers, literary enthusiasts, and the Janeite who has everything, this new collection highlights these incredible women's hardships, their influence, and the spark that called them to write.• GREAT GRAPHIC NOVEL FOR ALL AGES: Librarians and teachers recommend graphic novels for readers of all ages, especially beloved nonfiction titles like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Raina Telgemeier's Smile, Sisters, and Guts. Immerse yourself in the stories of these fascinating women through the fun, approachable, and dynamic medium of the graphic novel!• CELEBRATION OF WOMEN WRITERS: Want to read more books by historical women writers, but aren't sure where to start? The stories and bibliographies of the women featured in Why She Wrote is an inspirational deep dive.• OVERVIEW OF WOMEN'S HISTORY: Add it to the shelf alongside other collections of women's history, including Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky, Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Pénélope Bagieu, and Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights by Mikki Kendall and A. D'Amico.By the time he turned thirty at the end of the nineteenth century, John D. Hart thrived as the busiest…
importer of bananas on the East Coast. A master of ships with a thunderous voice, Hart aggressively carried tropical fruit to an insatiable market with little concern for notions of supply and demand. But when an unexpected crisis hit the fruit business, Hart was unprepared. The financial Panic of 1893 doomed his strategy of bringing in limitless bananas. Jobless consumers could not afford such luxuries. Nearing bankruptcy, Hart was approached by Emilio Nuñez, a member of the Cuban Revolutionary Party—a cadre of exiled conspirators in New York whose singular purpose was to liberate the Cuban island from four hundred years of Spanish rule. Nuñez enlisted Hart as a “filibuster” to transport guns and ammunition to the Cuban rebels. For nearly three years, Hart became the most visible of a disparate group of mariners between New York and Key West who tormented Spanish authorities, riled the US government, and became heroes to an oppressed people fighting to be free. In King of the Gunrunners: How a Philadelphia Fruit Importer Inspired a Revolution and Provoked the Spanish-American War, author James W. Miller reveals the untold story of a forgotten American whose adventures helped pave the way for the United States’ emergence as an international power. With the Yellow Press trumpeting his exploits, Hart’s influence helped inflame the nation’s mood and made war with Spain inevitable. The quick US victory in what became known as the Spanish-American War compelled Spain to abandon Cuba and cede sovereignty over Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States, which also annexed the independent state of Hawaii during the conflict. This volume presents the story of Hart, the defiant king of the Cuban gunrunners, who prolonged a revolution, provoked a war, and left an indelible mark on history.Out of the Blue: Life on the Road with Muddy Waters (American Made Music Series)
By Brian Bisesi. 2024
Out of the Blue: Life on the Road with Muddy Waters begins with a moment lifted from a young musician’s…
dreams. Brian Bisesi, a guitarist barely out of his teens, is invited on stage to fill in for a missing member of the band backing blues legend Muddy Waters. This life-changing quirk of fate opens the door into a world of challenges and opportunities that Bisesi, an Italian American reared in the comforts of a New York City suburb, can barely imagine. Despite their differences, Bisesi and Waters hit it off, and what might have been a one-night stand turns into a career. From 1978 to 1980, Bisesi works for Waters as his road manager, bean-counter, and at times his confidant, while often sitting in with the band. Bisesi’s years with the band take him to Europe, Japan, Canada, and across the United States as Waters tours—and parties—with rock gods like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, a Beatle, and the gamut of musicians who came of age with Waters and introduced a younger generation to the blues. In Out of the Blue, Bisesi captures it all: from the pranks and tensions among bluesmen enduring a hard life on the road, to observations about Waters’s technique, his love of champagne and reefer, his eye for women, and his sometimes-acrid views of contemporary music. Bisesi has sharp insights into the ill-conceived management decisions that led to the dissolution of Waters’s longest-serving band in June of 1980. This book will rivet, amuse, and occasionally infuriate blues aficionados. It is a raucous and intimate portrait of the blues scene at a pivotal moment in time that fascinates music historians and blues fans alike.Creating and Opposing Empire: The Role of the Colonial Periodical Press (Routledge Studies in Cultural History)
By Adelaide Vieira Machado, Isadora de Ataíde Fonseca, Robert S. Newman, Sandra Ataíde Lobo. 2023
Focusing on the Portuguese Empire, this book examines colonial press issued in "metropolitan" spaces and in colonies, disclosing dissonant narratives…
and problematizations of colonial empires.Creating and Opposing Empire is a venture of the International Group for Studies of Colonial Periodical Press of the Portuguese Empire (IGSCP-PE), which also invests on comparative studies and conceptual discussions. This book analyses representations of Empire at colonial press published in "metropolitan" spaces and in colonies. By joining these spaces in the same analytic look, it explores different problematizations of colonial empires. The diversity of angles discloses why a decolonized, democratic, understanding of the world modulated by modern colonial empires needs to navigate the seas of dissonant narratives of community, nation, and empire. The book deals with the ideas that in their complexity and dynamism, until late in the twentieth century, were moulded in the game between the cultural context of representations and the universality of concepts. The studies range from approaches to International Exhibitions, Metropolitan Press, Colonial Models, Missionary Press, Literary Discourses, Colonial and Postcolonial Press, Constructing the "Others", Anticolonial Press, Democracy, Dictatorship, Censorship, Colonial Prison’s Press, among other themes. Its primordial focus on the Portuguese Empire, introduces perspectives rarely included in international discussions on colonial and imperial press histories.This book is essential for scholars and students in Media Studies, Modern History, Cultural, Literary Studies and Political Science.Always a Song: Singers, Songwriters, Sinners, and Saints – My Story of the Folk Music Revival
By Ellen Harper, Sam Barry. 2020
Always a Song is a collection of stories from singer and songwriter Ellen Harper—folk matriarch and mother to the Grammy-winning…
musician Ben Harper.Harper shares vivid memories of growing up in Los Angeles through the 1960s among famous and small-town musicians, raising Ben, and the historic Folk Music Center.This beautifully written memoir includes stories of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, The New Lost City Ramblers, Doc Watson, and many more.• Harper takes readers on an intimate journey through the folk music revival.• The book spans a transformational time in music, history, and American culture.• Covers historical events from the love-ins, women's rights protests, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the popularization of the sitar and the ukulele.• Includes full-color photo insert."Growing up, an endless stream of musicians and artists came from across the country to my family's music store. Bess Lomax Hawes, Joan Baez, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGee—all the singers, organizers, guitar and banjo pickers and players, songwriters, painters, dancers, their husbands, wives, and children—we were all in it together. And we believed singing could change the world."—Ellen HarperMusic lovers and history buffs will enjoy this rare invitation into a world of stories and song that inspired folk music today.• A must-read for lovers of music, history, and those nostalgic for the acoustic echo of the original folk music that influenced a generation• Harper's parents opened the legendary Folk Music Center in Claremont, California, as well as the revered folk music venue The Golden Ring.• A perfect book for people who are obsessed with folk music, all things 1960s, learning about musical movements, or California history• Great for those who loved Small Town Talk: Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock by Barney Hoskyns; and Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller.Great Expectations
By Vinson Cunningham. 2024
'A phenomenal, transfixing work; Cunningham is a singular, dazzling writer' Bryan Washington'A coming-of-age novel of the richest, most expansive kind, it's…
a rare debut, one that feels both intimate and revelatory' Megan AbbottA historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man's life in the highly anticipated debut novel from one of The New Yorker's rising stars.I'd seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his, but the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator's idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he'll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States's first Black president.Great Expectations is about David's eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions-questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, Great Expectations is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.Crossing the Border: On the Quadruple-Evidence Method
By Li Yang, Shuxian Ye. 2024
This book is the first monograph of its kind in the academic world which comprehensively expounds the new methodology of…
humanities. The quadruple-evidence method is one which integrates quadruple-evidences to open up new horizon for interpretation of ancient culture in the three-dimensional manner. The first layer of evidence refers to documents passed down from the past; the second layer of evidence refers to local written materials; the third layer of evidence includes oral legends of anthropology and folklore and etiquette in the living folk customs; the fourth layer of evidence refers to those ancient objects and images either unearthed in archaeological excavations or handed down from the past. The book consists of theoretical explorations and their applications in individual cases. While the first part studies the academic evolution, theory and methodological value of the quadruple-evidence method, the second part, in using the method in different cases, explores different historical and cultural phenomena in the history of China, attempting to extend the frontier of the origin of civilization from the approach of mythological studyThe Traitor of Arnhem: WWII’s Greatest Betrayal and the Moment That Changed History Forever
By Robert Verkaik. 2024
Sunday Times Bestselling author of The Traitor of Colditz Robert Verkaik reveals the incredible never-before-told story of the role played…
by the Cambridge Spies in the British defeat at Arnhem "Original, thought-provoking and exceedingly well written. I have not read such a convincing portrayal of the German intelligence war in Holland." Robert KershawThe end of the Second World War is in sight.Following the overwhelming victory on D-Day, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin all seek to shape the global future to their own ends and win the race to Berlin.The British launch Operation Market Garden, the greatest airborne operation the world has ever seen. It is a bold roll of the dice, which, if successful, will end the war in weeks. But behind the scenes, spies are working, and plans are betrayed, the operation fails and thousands of Allied soldiers die.The Traitor of Arnhem tells a never-before-told story of this iconic operation, and of the very different figures working in secret to cause the catastrophic defeat. One traitor a terrifying giant of a man, a supposed hero of the resistance who sent hundreds of fellow freedom fighters to torture and death, the other an aristocrat and an English gentleman, working from inside the heart of the Allied war effort in London. Both of them working for the Russians.Drawn from unseen records and shedding fresh light on the operation and the spies responsible for its failure, this is an incredible account of the battle that would go on to shape the twentieth century.The Cleopatras
By Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. 2024
'A thrilling biography, filled with the imperial ambitions and merciless intrigues' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORECleopatra: lover, seductress, and Egypt's greatest queen.A…
woman more myth than history, immortalized in poetry, drama, music, art, and film.She captivated Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, the two greatest Romans of the day, and died in a blaze of glory, with an asp clasped to her breast - or so the legend tells us.But the real-life story of the historical Cleopatra VII is even more compelling. She was the last of seven Cleopatras who ruled Egypt before it was subsumed into the Roman Empire. The seven Cleopatras were the powerhouses of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, the Macedonian family who ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great. Emulating the practices of the gods, the Cleopatras married their full-blood brothers and dominated the normally patriarchal world of politics and warfare. These extraordinary women keep a close grip on power in the wealthiest country of the ancient world.Each of the seven Cleopatras wielded absolute power. Their ruthless, single-minded, focus on dominance - generation after generation - resulted in extraordinary acts of betrayal, violence, and murder in the most malfunctional dynasty in history. Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones offers fresh and powerful insight into the real story of the Cleopatras, and the beguiling and tragic legend of the last queen of Egypt.Praise for The Cleopatras:'A real treat for those who relish epic histories of family power' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE'Admirably readable' ROBIN LANE FOX'Unlocks the fascinating history of many queens' KARA COONEY 'A vivid account' ADRIAN DODSONThe Routledge History of Happiness (Routledge Histories)
By Katie Barclay, Darrin M. McMahon, Peter N. Stearns. 2024
Unmatched in originality, breadth, and scope, The Routledge History of Happiness features chapters that explore the history, anthropology, and psychology…
of happiness across the globe.Through a chronological approach that ranges from the Classical and Postclassical to the twenty-first century, this volume balances intellectual-history treatments and wider efforts to deal with relevant popular culture and experience, including consumerism. It explores how and why the history of happiness has emerged in recent decades, as well as psychological and social science approaches to happiness, with a history of how relevant psychological research has unfolded. Chapters examine early cultural traditions concerning happiness, including material on Buddhist and Chinese traditions, and how they continue to influence ideas about happiness in the present day. Overall, each section emphasises wide geographical coverage, with particular attention paid to East Asia, Latin America, Europe, Russia, and Africa.The Routledge History of Happiness is of great use to all undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the global history of emotions.The Cleopatras
By Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. 2024
'A thrilling biography, filled with the imperial ambitions and merciless intrigues' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORECleopatra: lover, seductress, and Egypt's greatest queen.A…
woman more myth than history, immortalized in poetry, drama, music, art, and film.She captivated Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, the two greatest Romans of the day, and died in a blaze of glory, with an asp clasped to her breast - or so the legend tells us.But the real-life story of the historical Cleopatra VII is even more compelling. She was the last of seven Cleopatras who ruled Egypt before it was subsumed into the Roman Empire. The seven Cleopatras were the powerhouses of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, the Macedonian family who ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great. Emulating the practices of the gods, the Cleopatras married their full-blood brothers and dominated the normally patriarchal world of politics and warfare. These extraordinary women keep a close grip on power in the wealthiest country of the ancient world.Each of the seven Cleopatras wielded absolute power. Their ruthless, single-minded, focus on dominance - generation after generation - resulted in extraordinary acts of betrayal, violence, and murder in the most malfunctional dynasty in history. Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones offers fresh and powerful insight into the real story of the Cleopatras, and the beguiling and tragic legend of the last queen of Egypt.Praise for The Cleopatras:'A real treat for those who relish epic histories of family power' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE'Admirably readable' ROBIN LANE FOX'Unlocks the fascinating history of many queens' KARA COONEY 'A vivid account' ADRIAN DODSONPixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women
By Ellen Atlanta. 2023
A generation defining exposé of toxic beauty culture in our digital age and how it is harming women We are…
living in a new age of beauty. With advancements in cosmetic surgery, augmented reality face filters, photo editing apps, and exposure to more images than we were ever meant to see, we have the ability to craft ourselves in whichever way we please. We pinch, pull, squeeze, tweeze, smooth and slice ourselves beyond recognition. But is modern beauty culture truly empowering? Are we really in control?In every era there is a beauty ideal. Yet, today the pressure to attain and retain the perfect body is compounded by our addiction to sharing every angle of ourselves online. In an age of influencers and social media, modern beauty culture is all-consuming and it is hurting the lives of women around the world. From Love Island to lip filler, blackfishing to the beauty tax, Ellen Atlanta reconfigures our understanding of women's relationship with beauty culture to account for the digital age. Providing an eye-opening account of the realities young women face under a dominant industry, Pixel Flesh unmasks the absurdities of the dystopia we find ourselves living in. Both a rallying cry and a refusal to suffer in silence, this is a vital insight into what it feels like to exist as a woman in a digitally obsessed world.Look What You Made Me Do: The ultimate guide for Taylor Swift fans!
By Kat McKenna. 2024
THE MUST-HAVE HANDBOOK FOR TAYLOR SWIFT FANS, AND THE ONLY COMPANION YOU NEED FOR THE ERAS TOUR! What does it mean…
to be a FAN? If you're a Swiftie, you know that it takes commitment and dedication to be in a fandom. And there's nothing more rewarding than sourcing Taylor Swift news and updates, anticipating new music and meeting fellow fans. But fan culture today is more intense than ever, from trolling to stalkers to online warfare.So how did we get here? Discover the history of the first fandoms, the many Eras of Taylor Swift, the politics of celebrity and cancel culture, and above all: why being a fan is so special. Featuring interview with key Taylor Swift fans and celebrity culture icon DeuxMoi and the founder of Swiftogeddon, this book is the ultimate guide on how to be a fan.The Traitor of Arnhem: WWII’s Greatest Betrayal and the Moment That Changed History Forever
By Robert Verkaik. 2024
Sunday Times Bestselling author of The Traitor of Colditz Robert Verkaik reveals the incredible never-before-told story of the role played…
by the Cambridge Spies in the British defeat at Arnhem "Original, thought-provoking and exceedingly well written. I have not read such a convincing portrayal of the German intelligence war in Holland." Robert Kershaw, author of It Never Snow In SeptemberThe end of the Second World War is in sight.Following the overwhelming victory on D-Day, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin all seek to shape the global future to their own ends and win the race to Berlin.The British launch Operation Market Garden, the greatest airborne operation the world has ever seen. It is a bold roll of the dice, which, if successful, will end the war in weeks. But behind the scenes, spies are working, and plans are betrayed, the operation fails and thousands of Allied soldiers die.The Traitor of Arnhem tells a never-before-told story of this iconic operation, and of the very different figures working in secret to cause the catastrophic defeat. One traitor a terrifying giant of a man, a supposed hero of the resistance who sent hundreds of fellow freedom fighters to torture and death, the other an aristocrat and an English gentleman, working from inside the heart of the Allied war effort in London. Both of them working for the Russians.Drawn from unseen records and shedding fresh light on the operation and the spies responsible for its failure, this is an incredible account of the battle that would go on to shape the twentieth century."The strongest point of the book is the story about 'Josephine'. We will probably never be sure who 'Josephine' was, if it even was a person, but... Robert proves the case as far as circumstantial evidence allows one." Bob de Graaff, Holland's foremost expert on intelligence and the official historian of the Dutch intelligence services.Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women
By Ellen Atlanta. 2023
A generation defining exposé of toxic beauty culture in our digital age and how it is harming women We are…
living in a new age of beauty. With advancements in cosmetic surgery, augmented reality face filters, photo editing apps, and exposure to more images than we were ever meant to see, we have the ability to craft ourselves in whichever way we please. We pinch, pull, squeeze, tweeze, smooth and slice ourselves beyond recognition. But is modern beauty culture truly empowering? Are we really in control?In every era there is a beauty ideal. Yet, today the pressure to attain and retain the perfect body is compounded by our addiction to sharing every angle of ourselves online. In an age of influencers and social media, modern beauty culture is all-consuming and it is hurting the lives of women around the world. From Love Island to lip filler, blackfishing to the beauty tax, Ellen Atlanta reconfigures our understanding of women's relationship with beauty culture to account for the digital age. Providing an eye-opening account of the realities young women face under a dominant industry, Pixel Flesh unmasks the absurdities of the dystopia we find ourselves living in. Both a rallying cry and a refusal to suffer in silence, this is a vital insight into what it feels like to exist as a woman in a digitally obsessed world.Great Expectations
By Vinson Cunningham. 2024
'A phenomenal, transfixing work; Cunningham is a singular, dazzling writer' Bryan Washington'A coming-of-age novel of the richest, most expansive kind, it's…
a rare debut, one that feels both intimate and revelatory' Megan AbbottA historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man's life in the highly anticipated debut novel from one of The New Yorker's rising stars.I'd seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his, but the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator's idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he'll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States's first Black president.Great Expectations is about David's eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions-questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, Great Expectations is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Early American Studies)
By Randy M. Browne. 2024
The story of the driver is the story of Atlantic slavery. Starting in the seventeenth-century Caribbean, enslavers developed the driving…
system to solve their fundamental problem: how to extract labor from captive workers who had every reason to resist. In this system, enslaved Black drivers were tasked with supervising and punishing other enslaved laborers. In The Driver’s Story, Randy M. Browne illuminates the predicament and harrowing struggles of these men—and sometimes women—at the heart of the plantation world. What, Browne asks, did it mean to be trapped between the insatiable labor demands of white plantation authorities and the constant resistance of one’s fellow enslaved laborers?In this insightful and unsettling account of slavery and racial capitalism, Browne shows that on plantations across the Americas, drivers were at the center of enslaved people’s working lives, social relationships, and struggles against slavery. Drivers enforced labor discipline and confronted the resistance of their fellow enslaved laborers, aiming to maintain a position that helped them survive in a world where enslaved people were treated as disposable. Drivers also protected the people they supervised, negotiating workloads and customary rights to essentials like food and rest with white authorities. Within the slave community, drivers helped other enslaved people create a sense of belonging, as husbands and fathers, as Big Men, and as leaders of diasporic African “nations.” Sometimes, drivers even organized rebellions, sabotaging the very system they were appointed to support.Compelling and original, The Driver’s Story enriches our understanding of the never-ending war between enslavers and enslaved laborers by focusing on its front line. It also brings us face-to-face with the horror of capitalist labor exploitation.Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone
By Amy Key. 2023
"[Arrangements in Blue] reflects on a life spent as a single woman and how that affects friendships, freedom, domesticity, family,…
sexuality, the psyche, the self. It observes things about being alone that I have never seen or heard articulated before.... beautiful, effortless.... I haven’t been so obsessed with a book in a long time." —Dolly Alderton “The poet Amy Key’s first book might be the most hyped memoir of 2023 (or at least a close second to Spare)… This raw, gorgeous, pulsing memoir is…the harbinger of a real talent.” —Laura Hackett, Sunday Times [UK] Amy Key—a writer “of rare and strange magic” (Guardian)—probes the art of living without romance in this soul-stirring debut. When British poet Amy Key was growing up, she envisioned a life shaped by love—and Joni Mitchell’s album Blue was her inspiration. “Blue became part of my language of intimacy,” she writes, recalling the dozens of times she played the record as a teen, “an intimacy of disclosure, vulnerability, unadorned feeling that I thought I’d eventually share with a romantic other.” As the years ticked by, she held on to this very specific idea of romance like a bottle of wine saved for a special occasion. But what happens when the romance we are all told will give life meaning never presents itself? Now single in her forties, Key explores the sweeping scales of romantic feeling as she has encountered them, using the album Blue as an expressive anchor: from the low notes of loss and unfulfilled desire—punctuated by sharp, discordant feelings of jealousy and regret—to the deep harmony of friendship, and the crescendos of sexual attraction and self-realization. Finding solace in Mitchell’s songs, Key plumbs Blue’s track list for themes that resonate with her heart’s seasons. Listening to the song “California,” she explores the mixed emotions that come with traveling alone in a world built for couples; she juxtaposes the lonely lyrics of “My Old Man” with the pleasurable art of curating a perfect apartment for one; and with the utmost tenderness, she parses out her decision to not have children with the eloquent “Little Green.” Mapping the evolution of her early conceptions of love through her adulthood, Key offers a tender and nakedly candid celebration of the many forms of intimacy that often go unnoticed. An essential work for both the single and the partnered, Arrangements in Blue is a bold manual for building a life on your own terms.Strongmen: Mussolini To The Present
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat. 2020
What modern authoritarian leaders have in common (and how they can be stopped). Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the…
"strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin—enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America and Europe. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet’s torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi’s systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump’s relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country. Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is—and by valuing one another as he is unable to do—can we stop him, now and in the future.Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth
By Noa Tishby. 2021
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A &“fascinating and very moving&” (Aaron Sorkin, award-winning screenwriter of The West Wing and The…
Social Network) chronological timeline spanning from Biblical times to today that explores one of the most interesting countries in the world—Israel.Israel. The small strip of arid land is 5,700 miles away but remains a hot-button issue and a thorny topic of debate. But while everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts? Here to fill in the information gap is Israeli American Noa Tishby. But &“this is not your Bubbie&’s history book&” (Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher). Instead, offering a fresh, 360-degree view, Tishby brings her &“passion, humor, and deep intimacy&” (Yossi Klein Halevi, New York Times bestselling author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor) to the subject, creating an accessible and dynamic portrait of a tiny country of outsized relevance. Through bite-sized chunks of history and deeply personal stories, Tishby chronicles her homeland&’s evolution, beginning in Biblical times and moving forward to cover everything from WWI to Israel&’s creation to the disputes dividing the country today. Tackling popular misconceptions with an abundance of facts, Tishby provides critical context around headline-generating controversies and offers a clear, intimate account of the richly cultured country of Israel.