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Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Morbid Memoir
by Stacy HornWhen Stacy Horn--single, deeply addicted to television, and hopelessly attached to two diabetic cats--turned forty, she free-falled into a mid-life crisis. Waiting for My Cats to Die is a passionately and profoundly honest look at what happens the moment you realize--beyond a shadow of a doubt--that some day the credits will roll on your life. There are all those things you haven't done yet. There are all those things you have and wish you hadn't. In the battle against time, a frontal attack is the best strategy. Horn explores abandoned cemeteries and descends into crypts. She researches long-lost relatives, interviews the elderly, and learns all she can about the ghost haunting her apartment. No sign indicating the downward pull of things goes unnoticed. And yet life, with so much to celebrate, is irresistible. Here is a wonderful, quirky, refreshing memoir of hilarity and heartache: life at the mid-point of life.
The Order of Things: A Novel
by Lynne HintonAn out of sorts librarian finds support and friendship in the most unlikely place. The Order of Things is a new novel from Lynne Hinton--the national bestselling author of Friendship Cake.Andreas Jay Hackett is a university librarian known for her love of keeping things organized. But one summer, she finds herself falling away from a sense of well being, depressed, "out of order." Her work doesn't give her pleasure, her friends worry about her, and her own voice begins to frighten her. Therapy, pills and doctors visits don't help, so Andreas checks herself into a psychiatric facility. There, she finds herself in a room next door to a prison inmate who has also been hospitalized. As she talks with her new neighbor, Andreas begins to come out of her despair--ultimately finding the healing she needs through a friendship that develops in the darkest of circumstances, and despite boundaries of race, gender, education, and age.
Someone Will Be with You Shortly: Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life
by Lisa KoganFrom the beloved O Magazine writer, observations on life and love that are insightful, moving, and “always, always spot-on hilarious” (Winston-Salem Journal).Someone Will Be with You Shortly is a collection of witty, pointed, and poignant essays from beloved O Magazine columnist Lisa Kogan—who has been called “the Erma Bombeck of our generation” (Kelly Corrigan, New York Times-bestselling author of Tell Me More)—in which she brings her trademark humor to such real-life quandaries as single motherhood, aging, and sex.“There’s laughter here, sure, but this book winningly rises above comedy to reveal a moving love for life.” —Time Out New York“If Lisa Kogan didn’t exist, Nora Ephron would have to invent her. Like the tart-tongued yet lovable heroine portrayed in screwball romantic comedies, Kogan wears her heart on a sleeve that, like as not, was pulled from the bottom of her closet and could use a good dry cleaning . . . Kogan’s take on contemporary living is as irrepressibly savvy as a Prada diaper bag, as reassuringly satisfying as a PB-and-J sandwich.” —Booklist “[Kogan’s] wry observations of everyday life will hearten you on your worst days, validate you on your best, and make you laugh any day at all.” —Martha Beck, New York Times-bestselling author of The Way of Integrity“A delectable blend of wit, whimsy, pith, and poignancy. If David Sedaris were a girl . . . this is the book he’d write.” —Evan Handler, author of It’s Only Temporary
Exiles: A Memoir
by Michael J. ArlenBack in print, "a wry and moving . . . rare and minute accounting of growing up." (Time)Exiles is the story of two glamorous people—one, a beautiful aristocrat; the other, a self-made man, one of the most famous authors of the 1920s. In this slender volume, which was nominated for the 1970 National Book Award and helped reestablish the memoir as a genre, Michael J. Arlen evokes—with humor and honesty—his parents' seemingly charmed life in Hollywood and New York, his own childhood spent between homes and boarding schools, and the decline of a family full of love, joy, and pride in one another: in other words, a family as ordinary as it is unusual.
Eye of the Archangel: A Mallory And Morse Novel Of Espionage (Mallory & Morse Novels)
by Forrest DeVoe Jr.JFK is in the Oval Office. "Love Me Do" is climbing the charts. And in West Berlin, a wealthy ex-black marketeer, the Dane, is offering a stolen spy satellite for sale. Nothing unusual there, except the asking price: half a billion dollars. Too much for any satellite—unless it's Hitler's legendary, long-lost Project Archangel.Archangel, it's rumored, is a device capable of shifting the balance of the Cold War. To find it, Mallory and Morse fly to the Monaco Grand Prix and infiltrate the Dane's entourage: a pair of lovely and vicious blonde twins, a ravishing Polish giantess with a taste for movie magazines, and an American ex-mercenary with quiet eyes and hands like stone. The Dane is both a perfect host and a savage killer, and has already done one of the Consultancy's agents to death. But their greatest peril may come from the long-buried passions of the icily beautiful Laura Morse. . . .
The Dog Stars (Vintage Contemporaries Ser.)
by Peter HellerNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of The River: In this "end-of-the-world novel more like a rapturous beginning" (San Francisco Chronicle), Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. His gripping story is "an ode to friendship between two men...the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).Hig's wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley. But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.
The Thing Around Your Neck
by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieFrom the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—a dazzling story collection filled with "indelible characters who jump off the page and into your head and heart" (USA Today).In these twelve riveting stories, the award-winning Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, these stories map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them.
Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad
by Jacqueline L. Tobin Raymond G. DobardThe fascinating story of a friendship, a lost tradition, and an incredible discovery, revealing how enslaved men and women made encoded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. In Hidden in Plain View, historian Jacqueline Tobin and scholar Raymond Dobard offer the first proof that certain quilt patterns, including a prominent one called the Charleston Code, were, in fact, essential tools for escape along the Underground Railroad. In 1993, historian Jacqueline Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts in the Old Market Building of Charleston, South Carolina. With the admonition to "write this down," Williams began to describe how slaves made coded quilts and used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. But just as quickly as she started, Williams stopped, informing Tobin that she would learn the rest when she was "ready." During the three years it took for Williams's narrative to unfold—and as the friendship and trust between the two women grew—Tobin enlisted Raymond Dobard, Ph.D., an art history professor and well-known African American quilter, to help unravel the mystery.Part adventure and part history, Hidden in Plain View traces the origin of the Charleston Code from Africa to the Carolinas, from the low-country island Gullah peoples to free blacks living in the cities of the North, and shows how three people from completely different backgrounds pieced together one amazing American story.With a new afterword. Illlustrations and photographs throughout, including a full-color photo insert.
The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir
by Ingrid Rojas ContrerasPULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the bestselling author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, VULTURE, PEOPLE, BOSTON GLOBE, VANITY FAIR, ESQUIRE, & MORE &“Rojas Contreras reacquaints herself with her family&’s past, weaving their stories with personal narrative, unraveling legacies of violence, machismo and colonialism… In the process, she has written a spellbinding and genre-defying ancestral history.&”—New York Times Book Review For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother&’s fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called &“the secrets&”: the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit &“the secrets,&” Rojas Contreras&’ mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water.This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to &“the secrets.&”In 2012, spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter Nono&’s remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often amusing guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps: those who believe &“the secrets&” are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse.Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.
Rogue Lawyer: A Novel
by John Grisham#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Featuring one of John Grisham&’s most colorful, outrageous, and vividly drawn characters yet, Rogue Lawyer showcases the master of the legal thriller at his very best. On the right side of the law—sort of—Sebastian Rudd is not your typical street lawyer. His office is a customized bulletproof van, complete with Wi-Fi, a bar, a small fridge, and fine leather chairs. He has no firm, no partners, and only one employee: his heavily armed driver, who also so happens to be his bodyguard, law clerk, confidant, and golf caddie. Sebastian drinks small-batch bourbon and carries a gun. He defends people other lawyers won&’t go near: a drug-addled, tattooed kid rumored to be in a satanic cult; a vicious crime lord on death row; a homeowner arrested for shooting at a SWAT team that mistakenly invaded his house. Why these clients? Because Sebastian believes everyone is entitled to a fair trial—even if he has to bend the law to secure one.Don&’t miss John Grisham&’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners
by Jenny Minton Quigley&“A diverse and glorious selection . . . a gift of imagination, wit, and wonder. The collection is filled with miniature masterpieces. . . . This must-have anthology is a treasure trove not to be missed.&” —Library Journal (starred review)The prestigious annual story anthology, featuring prize-winning stories by Kate DiCamillo, Jess Walter, Dave Eggers, Allegra Goodman, Jai Chakrabarti, Francisco Gonzalez, and more.Continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year's edition contains twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest editor Amor Towles has brought his own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and emerging voices. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Towles, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.THE WINNING STORIES&“Roy,&” Emma Binder&“The Soccer Balls of Mr. Kurz,&” Michele Mari (translated from the Italian by Brian Robert Moore)&“Orphans,&” Brad Felver&“The Home Visit,&” Morris Collins&“The Import,&” Jai Chakrabarti&“Didi,&” Amber Caron&“Serranos,&” Francisco González&“Hiding Spot,&” Caroline Kim&“Junior,&” Katherine D. Stutzman&“My Good Friend,&” Juliana Leite (translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry)"The Castle of Rose Tellin,&” Kate DiCamillo"Rain,&” Colin Barrett&“Marital Problems,&” Robin Romm&“The Last Grownup,&” Allegra Goodman&“The Honor of Your Presence,&” Dave Eggers&“The Paper Artist,&” E. K. Ota&“The Room-Service Waiter,&” Tom Crewe&“Seeing Through Maps,&” Madeline ffitch&“The Dark,&” Jess Walter&“Mobilization,&” Allegra Hyde
Spirits Come from Water: An Introduction to Ancestral Veneration and Reclaiming African Spiritual Practices
by Ehime OraFor those who wish to decolonize their minds, particularly Black women, comes a thoughtful guide to ancestral veneration, with a focus on the importance of reclaiming African Spiritual practices as an act of liberation.In today's world, there's a notable resurgence in spiritual exploration that diverges from the mainstream New Age culture. People are seeking clarity that aligns with their own ancestral lineage, and ancestral veneration has emerged as a powerful avenue to navigate life's complexities. For Black communities, this resurgence represents a reclamation of hope for the diaspora.In this book, Ifa and Orisa priestess Ehime Ora shares the importance of connection to the ancestors, and to one&’s spiritual roots. There&’s a certain type of radical healing that takes place when we reconnect to our ancestral veneration and follow through with their wisdom.Providing healing through the written word, Ehime walks you though the reclamation of African Spiritual practices, discussing the spiritual renaissance occurring in the African community, and includes interviews with elders of the rich traditions. She also provides tangible spiritual tools so that you can incorporate ancestral veneration in your life: how to properly set up and work with an ancestral altar, the importance of spiritual hygiene, and bringing forth the concept of the ori, or the higher self.
Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier (The Oregon Files #18)
by Mike MadenA deadly war game. An adversary as hard to find as he is to kill. Weapons so sophisticated, none have seen the like before. Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon have finally met their match in this pulse-pounding new adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.When African jihadis attack a Nigerian regiment using American weapons, Cabrillo and the Oregon crew are on the case, investigating from Afghanistan to Kuala Lumpur to track a mysterious arms dealer—a genius, or perhaps a devil—known only as the Vendor.Cabrillo goes undercover to find the Vendor&’s base, but his adversary isn&’t just an arms smuggler. He&’s an arms maker, and Cabrillo just walked into a lethal military game alongside the most dangerous mercenaries in the world, designed to test the Vendor&’s cutting-edge AI arsenal.And yet, surviving an arena full of flame-throwing robots isn&’t even his biggest problem. The Vendor has an army of high-speed drones headed for a pivotal military site, and if the Oregon crew can&’t stop them from releasing a deadly neurotoxin, the entire globe will erupt in conflict.
Take My Grief Away: Voices from the War in Ukraine
by Katerina Gordeeva***LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 MOORE PRIZE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WRITING***'Read this book. Don't put it off until you'll supposedly be strong enough and ready for the reading. If you put it off, you'll find yourself defenseless in the face of evil.'- Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of Chernobyl PrayerIn the darkest of times, in the midst of it all, a journalist has one single task: to document everything that is happening. It is time to slow down and listen to the voice of a human being.On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Since that day, prize-winning independent journalist Katerina Gordeeva has travelled to refugee centres across Europe to record the human voice and cost of war. Take My Grief Away reveals twenty-four raw, heartbreaking first-person accounts from people united in grief and their first-hand experiences of the brutality and senselessness of war. These twenty-four voices will transform what you think you know about war, grief and human nature.
The Unhealed-Wound: The Church, the Priesthood, and the Question of Sexuality
by Eugene KennedyKennedy, a psychologist, former priest, and a leading Catholic author and scholar, addresses one of the most compelling yet undiscussed issues in the Church: human sexuality. The Unhealed Wound is a penetrating and insightful study of the unresolved conflicts Catholics face regarding both their sexuality and spirituality, deep conflicts which grow more and more serious as they remain unaddressed within the Church. He astutely yet respectfully takes to task a faith that-despite the reality of erotic love as a natural and human aspect of life itself-condemns birth control, marriage for priests, and sex outside of marriage. The Unhealed Wound also examines the Church's formidable hierarchy, challenging those clerics who uphold papal edicts unthinkingly. Articulately postulating our need not only to understand but celebrate our own sexuality, this book will engender both controversy and heated dialogue among today's scholars, students, and believers of Catholicism.
Joe and Me: An Education In Fishing And Friendship
by James ProsekWhen James Prosek was just fifteen, a ranger named Joe Haines caught him fishing without a permit in a stream near Prosek's home in Connecticut. But instead of taking off with his fishing buddy, James put down his rod and surrendered. It was a move that would change his life forever. Expecting a small fine and a lecture, James instead received enough knowledge about fishing and the great outdoors to last a lifetime.The story of an unlikely friendship, Joe and Me is a book for those who remember the mentor in their life, the one who changed the way they look at the world.
1603: The Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft, and the Birth of the Stuart Era
by Christopher Lee1603 was the year that Queen Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors, died. Her cousin, Robert Carey, immediately rode like a demon to Scotland to take the news to James VI. The cataclysmic time of the Stuart monarchy had come and the son of Mary Queen of Scots left Edinburgh for London to claim his throne as James I of England. Diaries and notes written in 1603 describe how a resurgence of the plague killed nearly 40,000 people. Priests blamed the sins of the people for the pestilence, witches were strangled and burned and plotters strung up on gate tops. But not all was gloom and violence. From a ship's log we learn of the first precious cargoes of pepper arriving from the East Indies after the establishment of a new spice route; Shakespeare was finishing Othello and Ben Jonson wrote furiously to please a nation thirsting for entertainment. 1603 was one of the most important and interesting years in British history. In 1603: The Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft, and the Birth of the Stuart Era, Christopher Lee, acclaimed author of This Sceptred Isle, unfolds its story from first-hand accounts and original documents to mirror the seminal year in which Britain moved from Tudor medievalism towards the wars, republicanism and regicide that lay ahead.
Autonomy After Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity
by Martin ShusterEver since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomy—the idea that we are beholden to no law except one we impose upon ourselves—has been considered the truest philosophical expression of human freedom. But could our commitment to autonomy, as Theodor Adorno asked, be related to the extreme evils that we have witnessed in modernity? In Autonomy after Auschwitz, Martin Shuster explores this difficult question with astonishing theoretical acumen, examining the precise ways autonomy can lead us down a path of evil and how it might be prevented from doing so. Shuster uncovers dangers in the notion of autonomy as it was originally conceived by Kant. Putting Adorno into dialogue with a range of European philosophers, notably Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, and Habermas—as well as with a variety of contemporary Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin—he illuminates Adorno’s important revisions to this fraught concept and how his different understanding of autonomous agency, fully articulated, might open up new and positive social and political possibilities. Altogether, Autonomy after Auschwitz is a meditation on modern evil and human agency, one that demonstrates the tremendous ethical stakes at the heart of philosophy.
The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton
by Vivian GornickElizabeth Cady Stanton—along with her comrade-in-arms, Susan B. Anthony—was one of the most important leaders of the movement to gain American women the vote. But, as Vivian Gornick argues in this passionate, vivid biographical essay, Stanton is also the greatest feminist thinker of the nineteenth century. Endowed with a philosophical cast of mind large enough to grasp the immensity that women's rights addressed, Stanton developed a devotion to equality uniquely American in character. Her writing and life make clear why feminism as a liberation movement has flourished here as nowhere else in the world.Born in 1815 into a conservative family of privilege, Stanton was radicalized by her experience in the abolitionist movement. Attending the first international conference on slavery in London in 1840, she found herself amazed when the conference officials refused to seat her because of her sex. At that moment she realized that "In the eyes of the world I was not as I was in my own eyes, I was only a woman." At the same moment she saw what it meant for the American republic to have failed to deliver on its fundamental promise of equality for all. In her last public address, "The Solitude of Self," (delivered in 1892), she argued for women's political equality on the grounds that loneliness is the human condition, and that each citizen therefore needs the tools to fight alone for his or her interests.Vivian Gornick first encountered "The Solitude of Self" thirty years ago. Of that moment Gornick writes, "I hardly knew who Stanton was, much less what this speech meant in her life, or in our history, but it I can still remember thinking with excitement and gratitude, as I read these words for the first time, eighty years after they were written, ‘We are beginning where she left off.' "The Solitude of Self is a profound, distilled meditation on what makes American feminism American from one of the finest critics of our time.
Shadowfae: A Novel (Shadowfae Chronicles #1)
by Erica HayesImagine a secret world veiled in fairy glamour and brimming with unearthly delights. A city swarming with half-mad fairies, where thieving spriggans rob you blind, beautiful banshees mesmerize you with their song, and big green trolls bust heads at nightclubs. And once you're in, there's no escape…Welcome to the world of Erica Hayes Shadowfae.Enslaved by a demon lord, Jade is forced to spend her nights seducing vampire gangsters and shapeshifting thugs. After two hundred years as a succubus, she burns for freedom and longs to escape her brutal life as a trophy girl for hell's minions. Then she meets Rajah, an incubus who touches her heart and intoxicates her senses. Rajah shares the same bleak fate as she, and yearns just as desperately for freedom. But the only way for Jade to break her bonds is to betray Rajah—and doom the only man she's ever loved to a lifetime in hell.
Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen
by Joe DrapeJoe Drape's Our Boys tells an inspiring portrait of the extraordinary high-school football team whose quest for perfection sustains its hometown in the heartlandThe football team in Smith Center, Kansas, has won sixty-seven games in a row, the nation's longest high-school winning streak. They have done so by embracing a philosophy of life taught by their legendary coach, Roger Barta: "Respect each other, then learn to love each other and together we are champions."But as they embarked on a quest for a fifth consecutive title in the fall of 2008, they faced a potentially destabilizing transition: the greatest senior class in school history had graduated, and Barta was contemplating retirement after three decades on the sidelines. In Smith Center—population: 1,931—this changing of the guard was seismic. Hours removed from the nearest city, the town revolves around "our boys" in a way that goes to the heart of what America's heartland is today.Joe Drape, a Kansas City native and an award-winning sportswriter for The New York Times, moved his family to Smith Center to discover what makes the team and the town an inspiration even to those who live hundreds of miles away. His stories of the coaches, players, and parents reveal a community fighting to hold on to a way of life that is rich in value, even as its economic fortunes decline.Drape's moving portrait of Coach Barta and the impressive young men of Smith Center is sure to take its place among the more memorable American sports stories of recent years.
The Poet's Freedom: A Notebook on Making
by Susan StewartWhy do we need new art? How free is the artist in making? And why is the artist, and particularly the poet, a figure of freedom in Western culture? The MacArthur Award–winning poet and critic Susan Stewart ponders these questions in The Poet’s Freedom. Through a series of evocative essays, she not only argues that freedom is necessary to making and is itself something made, but also shows how artists give rules to their practices and model a self-determination that might serve in other spheres of work.Stewart traces the ideas of freedom and making through insightful readings of an array of Western philosophers and poets—Plato, Homer, Marx, Heidegger, Arendt, Dante, and Coleridge are among her key sources. She begins by considering the theme of making in the Hebrew Scriptures, examining their accountof a god who creates the world and leaves humans free to rearrange and reform the materials of nature. She goes on to follow the force of moods, sounds, rhythms, images, metrical rules, rhetorical traditions, the traps of the passions, and the nature of language in the cycle of making and remaking. Throughout the book she weaves the insight that the freedom to reverse any act of artistic making is as essential as the freedom to create. A book about the pleasures of making and thinking as means of life, The Poet’s Freedom explores and celebrates the freedom of artists who, working under finite conditions, make considered choices and shape surprising consequences. This engaging and beautifully written notebook on making will attract anyone interested in the creation of art and literature.
My Queer War
by James LordA powerful story of sexual awakening during the Second World War, My Queer War, from the noted memoirist and critic James Lord tells the story of a young man's exposure to the terrors, dislocations, and horrors of armed conflict.In 1942, a timid, inexperienced twenty-one-year-old Lord reports to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to enlist in the U.S. Army. His career in the armed forces takes him to Nevada, California, Boston, England, and, eventually, France and Germany, where he witnesses firsthand the ravages of total war on Europe's land and on its people. Along the way he comes to terms with his own sexuality, experiences the thrill of first love and the chill of disillusionment with his fellow man, and in a moment of great rashness makes the acquaintance of the world's most renowned artist, who will show him the way to a new life.My Queer War is a rich and moving record of one man's maturation in the crucible of the greatest war the world has known. If his war is queer, it is because each man's experience is strange in its own way. His is a story of universal significance and appeal, told by a wry and eloquent observer of the world and of himself.
Opening the Mind's Eye: How Images and Language Teach Us How To See
by Ian RobertsonIan Robertson has always been fascinated by how the mind makes images, for that awesome power directly and deeply affects our lives. All of us "visualize" the world differently, and how we do so dictates the way we feel, remember, and think--and therefore our health, memory, and creativity. In this lively, accessible and fascinating book, Robertson explains that most of us employ language as a basis for visualization. In effect, we think in words more than in images. The result is an imbalance between the logical and the intuitive, between imagery-based thought and language-based thought. Opening the Mind's Eye is both an enlightening and stimulating explanation of how we "see," and a compelling argument for extending the mind's powers to improve the quality of our lives. Like Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, it combines insight and application.
Steam: The Untold Story of America's First Great Invention
by Andrea SutcliffeIn 1807, Robert Fulton, using an English mail-order steam engine, chugged four miles an hour up the Hudson River, passing into popular folklore as the inventor of the steamboat. However, the true first passenger steamboat in America, and the world, was built from scratch, and plied the Delaware River in 1790, almost two decades earlier. Its inventor, John Fitch, never attained Fulton's riches, and was rewarded with ridicule and poverty. Considering there was not a single working steam engine in America in the early 1780s, Fitch's steamboat's development was nothing short of remarkable. But he faced competition from the start, and he and several other inventors fought a string of bitter battles, legal and otherwise. Steam tells the dramatic story of Fitch and his adversaries, weaving their lives into a fascinating tale including the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. It is the story behind America's first important venture in technology, the persevering and colorful men that made it happen, and the great invention that moved a new nation westward.