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My Family and Other Seedlings: A Year on a Dorset Allotment
By Lalage Snow. 2024
A few years ago Lally Snow moved to a Dorset village with her husband and three small children, having spent…
over a decade as a war photographer, foreign correspondent and film maker living in Kabul. She covered the conflict there as well as other wars from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine, and Iraq.In the late winter of 2021-22, Lally decided to rent an allotment, despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of gardening. She was starting from scratch and setting herself the dual challenge of growing an allotment at the same time as growing a family.This is a heart-warming, wry and at times tearful account of Lally's travails as a mother and novice allotment holder, counterpointing horticultural progress with the perils of parenting. Along the way she reflects on the drudgery of English rural domesticity after a professional life chasing war and adventure, the history of the allotment since Saxon times, and the wonderful moment when gardening becomes fun rather than just feeding a family.My Family and Other Seedlings: A Year on a Dorset Allotment
By Lalage Snow. 2024
A few years ago Lally Snow moved to a Dorset village with her husband and three small children, having spent…
over a decade as a war photographer, foreign correspondent and film maker living in Kabul. She covered the conflict there as well as other wars from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine, and Iraq.In the late winter of 2021-22, Lally decided to rent an allotment, despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of gardening. She was starting from scratch and setting herself the dual challenge of growing an allotment at the same time as growing a family.This is a heart-warming, wry and at times tearful account of Lally's travails as a mother and novice allotment holder, counterpointing horticultural progress with the perils of parenting. Along the way she reflects on the drudgery of English rural domesticity after a professional life chasing war and adventure, the history of the allotment since Saxon times, and the wonderful moment when gardening becomes fun rather than just feeding a family.Feather Trails: A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds
By Sophie A. Osborn. 2024
The story of one woman’s remarkable work with a trio of charismatic, endangered bird species—and her discoveries about the devastating…
threats that imperil them. In Feather Trails, wildlife biologist and birder Sophie A. H. Osborn reveals how the harmful environmental choices we’ve made—including pesticide use, the introduction of invasive species, lead poisoning, and habitat destruction—have decimated Peregrine Falcons, Hawaiian Crows, and California Condors. In the Rocky Mountains, the cloud forests of Hawai’i, and the Grand Canyon, Sophie and her colleagues work day-to-day to try to reintroduce these birds to the wild, even when it seems that the odds are steeply stacked against their survival. With humor and suspense, Feather Trails introduces us to the fascinating behaviors and unique personalities of Sophie’s avian charges and shows that what endangers them ultimately threatens all life on our planet. More than a deeply researched environmental investigation, Feather Trails is also a personal journey and human story, in which Sophie overcomes her own obstacles—among them heat exhaustion, poachers, rattlesnakes, and chauvinism. Ultimately, Feather Trails is an inspiring, poignant narrative about endangered birds and how our choices can help to ensure a future not only for the rarest species, but for us too. "An intimate look at the wonder and effort needed for working with endangered species in the wild. [Osborn's] matter-of-fact writing style and wry humor make the reader part of the action."—Booklist (starred review)"A riveting memoir of years of living dangerously."—Kirkus ReviewsFor the countless readers who have admired Philip Caputo's classic memoir of…
Vietnam, A Rumor of War, here is his powerful recounting of his life and adventures, updated with a foreword that assesses the state of the world and the journalist's art. As a journalist, Caputo has covered many of the world's troubles, and in Means of Escape, he tells the reader in moving and clear-eyed prose how he made himself into a writer, traveler, and observer with the nerve to put himself at the center of the world's conflicts. As a young reporter he investigated the Mafia in Chicago, earning acclaim as well as threats against his safety. Later, he rode camels through the desert and enjoyed Bedouin hospitality, was kidnapped and held captive by Islamic extremists, and was targeted and hit by sniper fire in Beirut, with memories of Vietnam never far from the surface. And after it all, he went into Afghanistan. Caputo's goal has always been to bear witness to the crimes, ambitions, fears, ferocities, and hopes of humanity. With Means of Escape, he has done so.The Key: How to Write Damn Good Fiction Using the Power of Myth
By James N. Frey. 2000
In his widely read guides How to Write a Damn Good Novel and How to Write a Damn Good Novel…
II: Advanced Techniques, popular novelist and fiction-writing coach James N. Frey showed tens of thousands of writers how--starting with rounded, living, breathing, dynamic characters--to structure a novel that sustains its tension and development and ends in a satisfying, dramatic climax.Now, in The Key, Frey takes his no-nonsense, "Damn Good" approach and applies it to Joseph Campbell's insights into the universal structure of myths. Myths, says Frey, are the basis of all storytelling, and their structures and motifs are just as powerful for contemporary writers as they were for Homer. Frey begins with the qualities found in mythic heros--ancient and modern--such as the hero's special talent, his or her wound, status as an "outlaw," and so on. He then demonstrates how the hero is initiated--sent on a mission, forced to learn the new rules, tested, and suffers a symbolic death and rebirth--before he or she can return home. Using dozens of classical and contemporary novels and films as models, Frey shows how these motifs and forms work their powerful magic on the reader's imagination.The Key is designed as a practical step-by-step guide for fiction writers and screen writers who want to shape their own ideas into a mythic story.Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay: Practical Advice for the Grammatically Challenged
By Richard Lederer, Richard Dowis. 1999
For years Richard Lederer has enthralled fans of the English language with his keen insights, commonsense advice, and witty presentation.…
Now Lederer has teamed up with Richard Dowis to take readers on another journey through the world's most wonderful, albeit perplexing, language. How many times have we all heard the word viable used in company meetings? Lederer and Dowis show us how "viable," somewhere along the line, was extracted from medical books, where it literally means "capable of living," and placed into the business lexicon, where it means...well, who knows?The authors clear up once and for all the confusion between lay and lie and put to rest some common myths about language. The book's finale is a ten-minute writing lesson from which everyone, from rank amateur to seasoned pro, can benefit. These and dozens of other features make this book pure pleasure for language buffs, writers, and teachers. Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay is useful and authoritative as well as fun to read, with humorous touches often popping up where least expected and most needed.Facing the Unseen: The Struggle to Center Mental Health in Medicine
By Damon Tweedy. 2024
From the New York Times bestselling author of Black Man in a White Coat comes a powerful and urgent call…
to center psychiatry and mental health care into the mainstream of medicineAs much as we all might wish that mental health problems, with their elusive causes and unsettling behaviors, simply did not exist, millions of people suffer from them, sometimes to an extreme extent. Many others face addiction to alcohol and other drugs, as overdose and suicide deaths abound. Yet the vast majority of doctors receive minimal instruction in treating these conditions during their lengthy medical training. This mismatch ignores the clear overlap between physical and mental distress, and too-often puts psychiatrists on the outside looking in as the medical system continues to fail many patients. In Facing The Unseen, bestselling author, professor of psychiatry, and practicing physician Damon Tweedy guides us through his days working in outpatient clinics, emergency rooms, and hospitals as he meets people from all walks of life who are grappling with physical and psychological illnesses. In powerful, compassionate, and eloquent prose, Tweedy argues for a more comprehensive and integrated approach where people with mental illness have a health care system that places their full well-being front and center.Kid-ventors: 35 Real Kids and their Amazing Inventions
By Kailei Pew. 2024
What do swim fins, Popsicles®, Infection-Detecting Stitches, the Braille alphabet, and Taco vs. Burrito all have in common? They were…
all invented by kids! When Remya Jose had to spend many hours washing her family’s laundry by hand, she invented a pedal powered washing machine that could finish the chore in only 20 minutes! When Tripp Phillips’ Lego creations kept falling apart, he developed a glue strong enough to hold his creations together that would wash off when he was ready to build something new! And when Fatima Al Kaabi didn’t have anyone willing to teach her about robotics, she turned to the internet to teach herself all the skills she needed—and created multiple crowd-pleasing robots in the process! From Popsicles® and swim fins to robots and glitter shooting prosthetics, Kailei Pew's middle grade nonfiction debut is full of fun and inspiring stories, illustrated by Shannon Wright, about real kid inventors who proved that even the youngest people can change the world.The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves
By Siri Hustvedt. 2009
In this unique neurological memoir Siri Hustvedt attempts to solve her own mysterious conditionWhile speaking at a memorial event for…
her father in 2006, Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. Despite her flapping arms and shaking legs, she continued to speak clearly and was able to finish her speech. It was as if she had suddenly become two people: a calm orator and a shuddering wreck. Then the seizures happened again and again. The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves tracks Hustvedt's search for a diagnosis, one that takes her inside the thought processes of several scientific disciplines, each one of which offers a distinct perspective on her paroxysms but no ready solution. In the process, she finds herself entangled in fundamental questions: What is the relationship between brain and mind? How do we remember? What is the self? During her investigations, Hustvedt joins a discussion group in which neurologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and brain scientists trade ideas to develop a new field: neuropsychoanalysis. She volunteers as a writing teacher for psychiatric in-patients at the Payne Whitney clinic in New York City and unearths precedents in medical history that illuminate the origins of and shifts in our theories about the mind-body problem. In The Shaking Woman, Hustvedt synthesizes her experience and research into a compelling mystery: Who is the shaking woman? In the end, the story she tells becomes, in the words of George Makari, author of Revolution in Mind, "a brilliant illumination for us all."I Cannot Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art
By Emily C. Bloom. 2024
An eloquent and intimate debut memoir about navigating the gap between expectation and reality in modern motherhood.I Cannot Control Everything…
Forever is Emily Bloom’s journey towards and through motherhood, a path that has become, for the average woman, laden with data and medical technology. Emily faces decisions regarding genetic testing and diagnosis, technologies that offer the illusion of certainty but carry the weight of hard decisions. Her desire to know more thrusts her back into the history of science, as she traces the discoveries that impacted the modern state of pregnancy and motherhood. With the birth of their daughter, who is diagnosed with congenital deafness and later, Type 1 diabetes, Emily and her husband find their life centered around medical data, devices, and doctor’s visits, but also made richer and fuller by parenting an exceptional child. As Emily learns, technology and data do not reduce the labor of caretaking. These things often fall, as the pandemic starkly revealed, on mothers. Trying to find a way out of the loneliness and individualism of 21st century parenthood, Emily finds joy in reaching outwards, towards art and literature–such as the maternal messiness of Louise Bourgeois or Greek myths about the power of fate–as well as the collective sustenance of friends and community.With lyrical and enchanting prose, I Cannot Control Everything Forever is an inspired meditation on art, science, and motherhood.Writer and editorial consultant Ron Hogan helps readers develop an ongoing writing practice as an end in and of itself,…
not a means to publication. Many people pick up the guitar without eyeing a career as a professional musician, or start painting without caring if they get a gallery. But with writing the assumption seems to be that the goal must be to get published. Why? Why is it acceptable to attain technical proficiency at "Stairway to Heaven" or plein air watercolors as a hobby, while writing is expected to earn its keep? In Our Endless and Proper Work, the second in Belt’s series of books about writing and publishing—along with Belt founder Anne Trubek’s So You Want to Publish a Book? (2020)—Ron Hogan argues writing should be an end in itself for more people. The founder of the literary site Beatrice, and creator of the popular newsletter "Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives", Hogan offers concrete steps to help writers develop ongoing creative practice in chapters such as “Reclaiming Your Time for Writing,” “Finding Your Groove,” and “Preparing Yourself for the Long Haul.” Sprinkled throughout are adorable illustrations by “Positive Doodles” creator Emm Roy. This concise, inspirational book encourages all people to take up writing not, as so many other handbooks and resources suggest, in order to make money or become famous, but because it can help you become a happier, more whole and engaged person.Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir
By Darius Stewart. 2024
From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up. Darius Stewart spent his childhood…
in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and hisGregg Herken's Brotherhood of the Bomb is the fascinating story of the men who founded the nuclear age, fully told…
for the first timeThe story of the twentieth century is largely the story of the power of science and technology. Within that story is the incredible tale of the human conflict between Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller-the scientists most responsible for the advent of weapons of mass destruction.How did science-and its practitioners-enlisted in the service of the state during the Second World War, become a slave to its patron during the Cold War? The story of these three men, builders of the bombs, is fundamentally about loyalty-to country, to science, and to each other-and about the wrenching choices that had to be made when these allegiances came into conflict.Gregg Herken gives us the behind-the-scenes account based upon a decade of research, interviews, and newly released Freedom of Information Act and Russian documents. Brotherhood of the Bomb is a vital slice of American history told authoritatively-and grippingly-for the first time.So You Want to Publish a Book?
By Anne Trubek. 2020
In So You Want to Publish a Book?, Anne Trubek, founder of Belt Publishing, demystifies the publishing process. This insightful…
guide offers concrete, witty advice and information to authors, prospective authors, and those curioNewton's Clock: Chaos in the Solar System
By Ivars Peterson. 1993
With his critically acclaimed best-sellers The Mathematical Toursist and Islands of Truth, Ivars Peterson took readers to the frontiers of…
modern mathematics. His new book provides an up-to-date look at one of science's greatest detective stories: the search for order in the workings of the solar system.In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton provided what astronomers had long sought: a seemingly reliable way of calculating planetary orbits and positions. Newton's laws of motion and his coherent, mathematical view of the universe dominated scientific discourse for centuries. At the same time, observers recorded subtle, unexpected movements of the planets and other bodies, suggesting that the solar system is not as placid and predictable as its venerable clockwork image suggests.Today, scientists can go beyond the hand calculations, mathematical tables, and massive observational logs that limited the explorations of Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and others. Using supercomputers to simulate the dynamics of the solar system, modern astronomers are learning more about the motions they observe and uncovering some astonishing examples of chaotic behavior in the heavens. Nonetheless, the long-term stability of the solar system remains a perplexing, unsolved issue, with each step toward its resolution exposing additional uncertainties and deeper mysteries.To show how our view of the solar system has changed from clocklike precision to chaos and complexity, Newton's Clock describes the development of celestial mechanics through the ages--from the star charts of ancient navigators to the seminal discoveries of the 17th centure; from the crucial work of Poincaré to the startling, sometimes controversial findings and theories made possible by modern mathematics and computer simulations. The result makes for entertaining and provocative reading, equal parts science, history, and intellectual adventure.Rust Belt Arcana: Tarot and Natural History in the Exurban Wilds
By Matt Stansberry, David Wilson. 2018
An insightful take on the Tarot through the lens of the industrial Midwest, and a beautiful piece of nature writing…
in its own right. What can the Tarot tell us about the flora and fauna of the industrial Midwest? In what ways might this ancient practice connect us to the Rust Belt today? Rust Belt Arcana uses the Tarot’s time-tested structure to answer these questions, juxtaposing the characteristics of the cards with the creatures and plants that surround us every day. The 22 idiosyncratic essays here—one for every card in the Major Arcana—bridge biology, natural history, and the human condition. They tell stories of abundance and loss, and they remind us of the Rust Belt’s persistent remnant wilderness, a landscape often dismissed as unremarkable. A magical book both for Tarot enthusiasts and for those who are seeking to see beauty in a beleaguered landscape and define their remarkable place within it.In This Together: My Story
By Ann Romney. 2015
When Mitt and Ann Romney met in their late teens, a great American love story began. And their life together…
would be blessed: five healthy sons, financial security, and a home filled with joy. Despite the typical ups and downs, they had a storybook life.Then, in 1998, Ann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She couldn't believe it was real; there were no therapies or treatments to help her. Mitt told her that day that they would tackle the diagnosis as a team: They were in it together. "As long as it isn't fatal, we're fine. If you have to be in a wheelchair, I'll be right there to push it," he told her. And Ann thought, "But I'll be the one in the wheelchair." A caregiver and helper her whole life, she'd crossed a terrible invisible line. She wouldn't be able to care for her family anymore. She was the patient. Ann and Mitt would face the most frightening and humbling experience of their lives.From reflections on her early life, her marriage, and her diagnosis and recovery, the sources of her faith, and the stories of others who overcame adversity and inspired her to keep going, In This Together is a brave and deeply honest portrait of a family facing an unexpected blow, often in the most public of circumstances."A lot of people talk about a transformation that happens when life throws you a curve ball, and the big one in my life was my MS diagnosis. With all the blessings I've had, MS has been my greatest teacher: It has taught me about faith, compassion, and serving others. I've met many people along the way who've shared advice and demonstrated enormous resilience in the face of challenges; their stories gave me strength. In sharing my story, I want to give others hope as I've been given hope on this journey."Founding Grammars: How Early America's War Over Words Shaped Today's Language
By Rosemarie Ostler. 2015
Who decided not to split infinitives? With whom should we take issue if in fact, we wish to boldly write…
what no grammarian hath writ before? In Founding Grammars, Rosemarie Ostler delves into the roots of our grammar obsession to answer these questions and many more. Standard grammar and accurate spelling are widely considered hallmarks of a good education, but their exact definitions are much more contentious - capable of inciting a full-blown grammar war at the splice of a comma, battles readily visible in the media and online in the comments of blogs and chat rooms. With an accessible and enthusiastic journalistic approach, Ostler considers these grammatical shibboleths, tracing current debates back to America's earliest days, an era when most families owned only two books - the Bible and a grammar primer. Along the way, she investigates colorful historical characters on both sides of the grammar debate in her efforts to unmask the origins of contemporary speech. Linguistic founding fathers like Noah Webster, Tory expatriate Lindley Murray, and post-Civil War literary critic Richard Grant White,all play a featured role in creating the rules we've come to use, and occasionally discard, throughout the years. Founding Grammars is for curious readers who want to know where grammar rules have come from, where they've been, and where they might go next.The Chick and the Dead: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors
By Carla Valentine. 2017
Carla Valentine works with the dead. After studying forensics, she assisted pathologists with post-mortems for years before becoming the curator…
of the world’s most famous pathology museum. When it comes to death, she truly is an expert, and in this book she shares that expertise.Using the most common post-mortem process as the backbone of the narrative, The Chick and the Dead takes the reader through the process of an autopsy while also describing the history and changing cultures of our relationship with the dead. The book is full of vivid insight into what happens to our bodies in the end. Each chapter considers an aspect of an autopsy alongside an aspect of Carla’s own life and work and touches on some of the more controversial aspects of our feelings towards death, including the relationship between sex and death and our attitudes toward human tissue collection.Starting with the first cut, we move from external examination into the body itself, discovering more about the heart, stomach and brain, and into dismembered and reconstructed bodies, at each stage taking a colorful detour into the question of what these things can teach us about the living. Join Carla on the journey from microscope-requesting nine-year-old to pathology educator and death engager at a Victorian museum (a journey made via around 5,000 autopsies) as she tells the story of exactly what it’s like to live a life immersed in death.First published in 1970, Leyla and Mejnun provides a thorough introduction to the Leyla and Mejnun love story and the…
various forms in which the story has appeared in the Islamic world. Finally, it offers for the delight of the English poetry lover, an extremely readable translation of the Turkish version of the story. This book will be of interest to students of literature and history.