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The City Is Up for Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led and Lost a City in Crisis
By Gregory Royal Pratt. 2024
"Gregory Pratt had a rare front-row seat to the passions, problems, peculiarities, hopes, disappointments, shenanigans, and pettiness in the drama…
and farce that was Lori Lightfoot's uneasy tenure on the fifth floor at City Hall. What he delivers on these pages takes us backstage to give us a powerful, incisive portrait of the woman, the details of her mayoralty, and the many players who shared the stage." —Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune reporter and author of A Chicago Tavern Chicago is a world-class city, but it is also a city in crisis. Crime is up, schools have repeatedly shut down due to conflict between City Hall and the powerful teachers' union, and COVID-19 only deepened the entrenched poverty, institutional racism, and endless tug of war between the city's haves and have nots. For four years, the person at the center of this storm was Lori Lightfoot. A groundbreaking figure—the first Black, gay woman to be elected mayor of a major city and only the second female mayor of Chicago—she knew the city was at a critical turning point when she took office in 2019. But the once-in-a-lifetime challenges she ended up facing were beyond anything she or anyone else saw coming. Chicago Tribune reporter Gregory Royal Pratt offers the first comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at the tumultuous single term of Mayor Lightfoot and the chaos that roiled the city and City Hall as she fought to live up to her promises to change the city's culture of corruption and villainy, reform its long-troubled police department, and make Chicago the safest big city in America. Some of Chicago's problems can be explained by forces greater than the mayor: national polarization, long-standing cultural and racial tensions, our plague years. But some are the result of Lightfoot's poor leadership at City Hall, a story that hasn't been told in full—until now.Sontag: Her Life and Work
By Benjamin Moser. 2019
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEFinalist for the Lambda Literary AwardFinalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyNamed one of…
the Best Books of the Year by: O Magazine, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Seattle TimesThe definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private faceNo writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. She was there when the Cuban Revolution began, and when the Berlin Wall came down; in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel, in besieged Sarajevo. She was in New York when artists tried to resist the tug of money—and when many gave in. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers. Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing. And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own. Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—and featuring nearly one hundred images—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.Essential Poems (To Fall in Love With)
By Daisy Goodwin. 2003
Forget chocolate, exotic lingerie, or marriage counselors -- the only props you'll ever need, whether you are in love or…
out of it, are the poems in this book. There are verses here to console you when the phone doesn't ring or the divorce papers have been signed, and poems that celebrate the joy of being in love, from the first kiss to walking down the aisle (for the second time). These essential poems, which include never-before-anthologized works, will tell you the truth about love.Fourteen: My year of darkness, and the light that followed
By Shannon Molloy. 2020
Optioned for a major film and adapted to the stage, Fourteen is this generation&’s Holding the Man – a moving coming-of-age…
memoir about a young man&’s search for identity and acceptance in the most unforgiving and hostile of places: high school. This is a story about my fourteenth year of life as a gay kid at an all-boys rugby-mad Catholic school in regional Queensland. It was a year in which I started to discover who I was, and deeply hated what was revealed. It was a year in which I had my first crush and first devastating heartbreak. It was a year of torment, bullying and betrayal – not just at the hands of my peers, but by adults who were meant to protect me. And it was a year that almost ended tragically. I found solace in writing and my budding journalism; in a close-knit group of friends, all growing up too quickly together; and in the fierce protection of family and a mother&’s unconditional love. These were moments of light and hilarity that kept me going. As much as Fourteen is a chronicle of the enormous struggle and adversity I endured, and the shocking consequences of it all, it&’s also a tale of survival. Because I did survive.Longlisted for the 2021 ABIA Biography Book of the Year &‘Teenagers should read this book, parents should read this book. Human beings, above all, should read this book.&’ Rick Morton, bestselling author of One Hundred Years of Dirt &‘I love this book … a beautifully written account of a young man struggling with his sexuality, overcoming shocking abuse and finding his way to pride.&’ Peter FitzSimons, bestselling author &‘Shannon is unflinching in recounting the horror, but he is also funny, empathetic and, above all, full of courage.&’ Bridie Jabour, author of The Way Things Should Be &‘A slice of life as experienced quite recently in the &“lucky country&”.&’ The Hon Michael Kirby, AC CMG &‘Shannon's bitter struggle is painfully recognisable and happening in playgrounds around the world. But he not only triumphs, he relives his past using his best weapon: beautiful words.&’ Australian Women&’s Weekly &‘A stunning memoir about heartbreak and acceptance … a unique, hilarious and bittersweet insight into the heart of a boy, the courage of survival, and the fierce love of a mother.&’ Frances Whiting, Courier Mail &‘Australia hasn&’t changed all that much from what Shannon describes in Fourteen. Marriage equality isn&’t the end; there is still such a long way to go, and books like this are an important part of that journey.&’ FIVE STARS. Good Reading &‘Intensely raw and incredibly moving.&’ OUTinPerth 'A book in which many will undoubtably see themselves and take solace' The AgeYevtushenko: Selected Poems
By Yevgeny Yevtushenko. 1962
This volume contains a selection of early works by Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko who blazed a trail for a generation of…
Soviet poets with a confident poetic voice that moves effortlessly between social and personal themes. ‘Zima Junction’ vividly describes his idyllic childhood in Siberia and his impressions of home after a long absence in Moscow. Private moments are captured in ‘Waking’, on the joys of discovering the unexpected in a lover, and ‘Birthday’, on a mother’s concern for her son, while ‘Encounter’ depicts an unexpected meeting with Hemingway in Copenhagen. ‘The Companion’ and ‘Party Card’ show war from a child’s eye, whether playing while oblivious to German bombs falling nearby or discovering a fatally wounded soldier in the forest, while Yevtushenko’s famous poem, ‘Babiy Yar’, is an angry exposé of the Nazi massacre of the Jews of Kiev.The Works of the Gawain Poet: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience
By Ad Putter, Myra Stokes. 2014
A new volume of the works of the Gawain poet, destined to become the definitive edition for students and scholars.This…
volume brings together four works of the unknown fourteenth-century poet famous for the Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in their original Middle English. In one of the great tales of medieval literature, Gawain, the noblest knight of King Arthur's court, must keep a deadly bargain with a monstrous knight and resist the advances of his host's beautiful wife. The dream vision of Pearl depicts a bereaved father whose lost child leads him to glimpse heaven. And in moral poems based on stories from the Bible, Cleanness warns against sins of the flesh and of desecration, while Patience encourages readers to endure suffering as God's will.Little is known about the so-called 'Gawain poet', who wrote during the late fourteenth century. It is believed that he came from south-east Cheshire, an important cultural and economic centre at the time, and he was clearly well-read in Latin, French and English. Although he is not named as the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, the four works have been attributed to him based on a careful comparison of their language, date and themes.Myra Stokes was formerly Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Bristol University. Her books include Justice and Mercy in Piers Plowman and The Language of Jane Austen.Ad Putter teaches at the English Department and the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Bristol, where is Professor of Medieval English Literature. His monographs include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance and An Introduction to the Gawain Poet, and he is also co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend.Writing from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965
By Mark Andryczyk. 2017
A selection of fifteen of Ukraine's most important, dynamic and entertaining contemporary writersUnder USSR rule, the subject matter and style…
of literary expression in Ukraine was strictly controlled and censored. But once Ukraine gained independence in 1991 its literary scene flourished, as the moving and delightful poems, essays and extracts collected here show. There are fifteen authors included in this book, both established and emerging, and in this anthology we see them grappling with history and the future, with big questions and small moments. From essays about Chernobyl to poetry about Robbie Williams, from fiction discussing Jimmy Hendrix live in Lviv to underground Ukrainian poetry of the Soviet era, WRITING FROM UKRAINE offers a unique window into a rich culture, a chance to experience a particularly Ukrainian sensibility and to celebrate Ukraine's nationhood, as told by its writers.Windharp: Poems of Ireland since 1916
By Niall MacMonagle. 2014
Windharp: Niall MacMonagle's essential anthology of the last century of Irish poetryThe Easter Rising of 1916 was a foundational moment…
of the independent Irish state; but while that insurrection continues to divide opinion, there is no disagreement as to the majesty of Yeats's 'Easter 1916', or about the excellence of the Irish poetic tradition over the past century. Windharp is an anthology that follows the twists and turns of Irish history, culture and society through the work of its remarkable standing army of poets. Edited by Niall MacMonagle, Ireland's most trusted poetry commentator,Windharp is an accessible and inspiring journey through a century of Irish life.'A landmark book' Clive James, TLS Books of the Year'Glorious' Irish Examiner'Beautifully produced ... an appealing and appetite-whetting introduction to a century's poetry' Irish Times'Beautifully judged ... poised perfectly between the canon and the tradition, with a generous inclusiveness' Eavan Boland, Irish Times'A perfect selection. One of the best anthologies of Irish poetry ever produced.' Donal RyanWillehalm
By Wolfram Eschenbach. 1984
Wolfram von Eschenbach (fl. c. 1195-1225), best known as the author of Parzival, based Willehalm, his epic poem of military…
prowess and courtly love, on the style and subject matter of an Old French "chanson de geste." In it he tells of the love of Willehalm for Giburc, a Saracen woman converted to Christianity, and its consequences. Seeking revenge for the insult to their faith, her relatives initiate a religious war but are finally routed. Wolfram's description of the two battles of Alischanz, with their massive slaughter and loss of heroes, and of the exploits of Willehalm and the quasicomic Rennewart, well displays the violence and courtliness of the medieval knightly ideal. Wolfram flavors his brutal account, however, with tender scenes between the lovers, asides to his audience, sympathetic cameos of his characters--especially the women--and, most unusually for his time, a surprising tolerance for 'pagans'.Wicked World! (Puffin Poetry)
By Benjamin Zephaniah. 2000
Welcome to the wild and wicked words of Benjamin Zephaniah. You'll find loads of cool people who make up our…
world in this rapping, happening hip-hop collection. From the South Pole to Mongolia and the Himalayas, this is a real world tour of poems about people and places, cultures and nationalities across our planet.Includes poems about Inuits, Celts, the history of Britain, Maories, the Dalai Lama, the North and South Poles, and much more - a rhyming round-the-world trip.Poems that bounce up from the page and demand to be read, rapped, sung and hip-hopped aloud - Independent on SundayVita Nuova
By Dante Alighieri. 2004
A unique treatise by a poet, written for poets, on the art of poetry, LA VITA NUOVA is elaborately and…
symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems, interspersed with his own prose commentary. The poems themselves tell the story of his love for Beatrice, from their first meeting at a May Day party in her father's house, through Dante's sufferings and his attempts to conceal the true object of his devotion by the use of 'screen-loves', to his overwhelming grief ather death, ending with the transformative vision of her in heaven. These are some of the richest love poems in literature and the movement from self-pitying lament to praise for the beloved's beauty and virtue, illustrate the elevating power of love.Wessex Poems and Other Verses: And Other Verses (Penguin Clothbound Poetry)
By Thomas Hardy. 2017
Wessex Poems was Hardy's first collection of poetry, published after he had turned away from novel-writing, disillusioned by the savage…
reception Jude the Obscure had received. The publication of Wessex Poems marked the start of an extraordinary new phase in Hardy's writing career, as he was to spent the rest of his life, some thirty years, writing and publishing poetry exclusively. Here are entertaining Dorset ballads, verses set during the Napoleonic Wars, and personal poems reflecting on Hardy's life and loves. Composed throughout Hardy's life and informed by his affection for his beloved Wessex, their publication heralded the arrival of a major new poetic voice.We Can Do Better Than This: An urgent manifesto for how we can shape a better world for LGBTQ+ people
By Beth Ditto, Owen Jones, Peppermint, Olly Alexander, Wolfgang Tillmans, Phyll Opoku-Gyimah. 2021
How do we shape a better world for LGBTQ+ people? Olly Alexander, Peppermint, Owen Jones, Beth Ditto, Shon Faye and…
more share their stories and visions for the future.'A vital addition to your bookshelf' Stylist, 5 Books for Summer'Captivating... A must-read' Gay Times, Books of the YearIn We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices - actors, musicians, writers, artists and activists - answer this vital question, at a time when the queer community continues to suffer discrimination and extreme violence. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they present a powerful manifesto for how - together - we can change lives everywhere.'Powerful, inspiring...urgent' Attitude'Read and be inspired' Peter Tatchell'Illuminating' Paul Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk'Friendly and fierce' Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay BarWe Are All From Somewhere Else: Migration and Survival in Poetry and Prose
By Ruth Padel. 2020
*First published as The Mara Crossing, now with new and updated material*'A prodigy, a book of wonders. Wonder, pity and…
terror, the searing section of voices in transit coercing compassion - and beyond that, empathy' IndependentHome is where you start from, but where is a swallow's real home? And what does 'native' mean if the English oak is an immigrant from Spain?In ninety richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration - from the millennia-old journeys of cells, trees, birds and beasts to Geese battle raging winds over Mount Everest, lemurs skim precipices in Madagascar and wildebeest, at the climax of their epic trek from Tanzania, braving a river filled with the largest crocodiles in Africa. Human migration has shaped civilisation but today is one of the greatest challenges the world faces. In a series of incisive portraits, Padel turns to the struggles of human displacement - the Flight into Egypt, John James Audubon emigrating to America (feeding migrant birds en route), migrant workers in Mumbai and refugees labouring over a drastically changing planet - to show how the purpose of migration, for both humans and animals, is survival.The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen
By Wilfred Owen. 2018
'Orpheus, the pagan saint of poets, went through hell and came back singing. In twentieth-century mythology, the singer wears a…
steel helmet and makes his descent "down some profound dull tunnel" in the stinking mud of the Western Front. For most readers of English poetry, the face under that helmet is that of Wilfred Owen.' Professor Jon Stallworthy, from his Introduction.When Wilfred Owen was killed in the days before the Armistice in 1918, he left behind a shattering, truthful and indelible record of a soldier's experience of the First World War. His greatest war poetry has been collected, edited and introduced here by Professor Jon Stallworthy. This special edition is published to commemorate the end of the hellish war that Owen, though the hard-won truth and terrible beauty of his poetry, has taught us never to forget.The Wanderer: Elegies, Epics, Riddles (Legends from the Ancient North)
By Petra Borner. 2013
Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, The Wanderer tells the classic tales that influenced JRR Tolkien's…
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men led a careless life,All was well with them: until One beganTo encompass evil, an enemy from hell.Grendel they called this cruel spirit...'J.R.R. Tolkien spent much of his life studying, translating and teaching the great epic stories of northern Europe, filled with heroes, dragons, trolls, dwarves and magic. He was hugely influential for his advocacy of Beowulf as a great work of literature and, even if he had never written The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, would be recognised today as a significant figure in the rediscovery of these extraordinary tales.Legends from the Ancient North brings together from Penguin Classics five of the key works behind Tolkien's fiction.They are startling, brutal, strange pieces of writing, with an elemental power brilliantly preserved in these translations.They plunge the reader into a world of treachery, quests, chivalry, trials of strength.They are the most ancient narratives that exist from northern Europe and bring us as near as we will ever get to the origins of the magical landscape of Middle-earth (Midgard) which Tolkien remade in the 20th century.In March 1807, the British Parliament passed an Act making the trading and transportation of slaves illegal. It was many…
years before slavery, as it was known then, was abolished, and slavery still continues today in different ways, but it was a big step forward towards the empancipation of a people. Malorie Blackman has drawn together some of the finest of today's writers and poets to contribute to this important anthology. Their short stories and poems sit alongside first-hand accounts of slavery from freed slaves, making a fascinating and absorbing collection that remembers and commemorates one of the most brutal and long-lasting inflictions of misery that human beings have inflicted upon other human beings.Tyger, Tyger (Penguin Little Black Classics)
By William Blake. 2016
'How can the bird that is born for joy / Sit in a cage and sing?'A selection of Blake's most…
haunting verse, including 'The Songs of Innocence and Experience'.One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.Twelve Words for Moss: Love, Loss And Moss
By Elizabeth-Jane Burnett. 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2024A SUNDAY TIMES AND BBC COUNTRYFILE BEST NATURE BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Exquisite, luminous and…
quietly radical . . . I loved it' Lucy Jones'A fascinating, subtle and risk-taking book' Robert MacfarlaneGlowflake, Rocket, Small Skies, Kind Spears, Marilyn . . . Moss is known as the living carpet but if you look really closely, it contains its own irrepressible light.In Twelve Words for Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett celebrates the unsung hero of the plant world with a unique blend of poetry, nature writing and memoir.Making her way through wetlands from Somerset to County Tyrone, Burnett discovers the hidden vibrancy and luminous beauty of these overlooked places. She also takes strength from them as she recovers from her grief at her father's death. As she meditates on and renames her favourite species of moss, she finds a healing power in language, and draws inspiration from the resilience and tenacity of her plant - and human - friends.'Burnett stretches the limits of prose, infusing it with poetic intensity to create a powerful, original voice' GuardianTroilus and Criseyde: The Book Of Troilus By Geoffrey Chaucer
By Geoffrey Chaucer. 1991
Set against the epic backdrop of the battle of Troy, Troilus and Criseyde is an evocative story of love and…
loss. When Troilus, the son of Priam, falls in love with the beautiful Criseyde, he is able to win her heart with the help of his cunning uncle Pandarus, and the lovers experience a brief period of bliss together. But the pair are soon forced apart by the inexorable tide of war and - despite their oath to remain faithful - Troilus is ultimately betrayed. Regarded by many as the greatest love poem of the Middle Ages, Troilus and Criseyde skilfully combines elements of comedy and tragedy to form an exquisite meditation on the fragility of romantic love, and the fallibility of humanity.