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Showing 1-9 of 1191 booksSuperbloom
Nicholas Carr
From the author of The Shallows, a bracing exploration of how social media has warped our sense of self and society. From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us. A celebrated commentator on the human consequences of technology, Nicholas Carr reorients the conversation around modern communication, challenging some of our most cherished beliefs about self-expression, free speech, and media democratization. He reveals how messaging apps strip nuance from conversation, how “digital crowding” erodes empathy and triggers aggression, how online political debates narrow our minds and distort our perceptions, and how advances in AI are further blurring the already hazy line between fantasy and reality. Even as Carr shows how tech companies and their tools of connection have failed us, he forces us to confront inconvenient truths about our own nature. The human psyche, it turns out, is profoundly ill-suited to the “superbloom” of information that technology has unleashed. With rich psychological insights and vivid examples drawn from history and science, Superbloom provides both a panoramic view of how media shapes society and an intimate examination of the fate of the self in a time of radical dislocation. It may be too late to change the system, Carr counsels, but it’s not too late to change ourselves.
The Woman Back from Moscow
Ha Jin
Through the life of a remarkable woman—based on pioneering stage director Sun Weishi (1921-1968)—this epic novel immerses us in the multifaceted history of China’s Communist Party. A powerful, insightful account from the National Book Award-winning author, who came of age during the Cultural Revolution. As a promising young actress, Sun Weishi made the critical decision to pursue her studies in Moscow—with the blessing of her influential adoptive father, Zhou Enlai, and Mao himself. The valuable insights she gained there during World War II, most notably the significance of characters' inner lives, would enable her to excel back in China, where she produced works by Chekhov and Gogol, and other socially progressive dramas, such as an adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her striking career as China's first female director of modern spoken drama (Huaju) would be derailed with the advent of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, however, which put her once again at odds with an old enemy—Jiang Qing, a fellow actress who schemed her way to the top as Mao's fourth and final wife. Through the decades-long rivalry between these two complex women, and their differing approaches to the men in power who shaped their lives, Ha Jin deftly explores the ideals of communism and the reality of the Chinese Communist Party. At the same time, the novel captivates us with Sun Weishi's personal struggles and triumphs, as she navigates friendship, love, art, and politics amidst the great events of the twentieth century.
Psychotherapy East and West
Alan Watts
Before he became a counterculture hero, Alan Watts was known as an incisive scholar of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy. In this 1961 classic, Watts demonstrates his deep understanding of both Western psychotherapy and the Eastern spiritual philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga. He examines the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that question the social norms and illusions that bind and constrict modern humans. Marking a groundbreaking synthesis, Watts asserts that the powerful insights of Freud and Jung, which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation, could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free people from their battles with the self. When psychotherapy merely helps us adjust to social norms, Watts argued, it falls short of true liberation, while Eastern philosophy seeks our natural relation to the cosmos.
Magic and Loss
Virginia Heffernan
Just as Susan Sontag did for photography and Marshall McLuhan did for television, Virginia Heffernan (called one of the "best living writers of English prose") reveals the logic and aesthetics behind the Internet. Since its inception, the Internet has morphed from merely an extension of traditional media into its own full-fledged civilization. It is among mankind's great masterpieces - a massive work of art. As an idea, it rivals monotheism. We all inhabit this fascinating place. But its deep logic, its cultural potential, and its societal impact often elude us. In this deep and thoughtful book, Virginia Heffernan presents an original and far-reaching analysis of what the Internet is and does. Life online, in the highly visual, social, portable, and global incarnation, rewards certain virtues. The new medium favors speed, accuracy, wit, prolificacy, and versatility, and its form and functions are changing how we perceive, experience, and understand the world.
Gender Queer
Maia Kobabe
2020 ALA Alex Award Winner 2020 Stonewall-Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book The ground-breaking, bestselling graphic novel is now available on audio. In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Then e created Gender Queer. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere. "It’s also a great resource for those who identify as nonbinary or asexual as well as for those who know someone who identifies that way and wish to better understand."—SLJ (starred review)
The Archaeology of Knowledge
Michel Foucault
Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge—are these facts of life or simply parts of speech? In a series of works of astonishing brilliance, historian Michel Foucault excavated the hidden assumptions that govern the way we live and the way we think. The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of things aid and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault's own methodological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now. Foucault's influence on generations of thinkers in the areas of sociology, queer theory, cultural studies, and critical thinking cannot to be underestimated. Challenging, at times infuriating, The Archaeology of Knowledge: And the Discourse on Language is an absolutely indispensable guide to one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. This audiobook is masterfully read by James Gillies, and was produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont. Audio engineering by Sam Platt.
America Ascendant
Dennis M Spragg
Our economy is on the move, fueled by revolutions in energy, immigration, innovation, big data, and advanced manufacturing. America's energy independence has set off shockwaves. Just as important are the social transformations that are making the country ever more racially and culturally diverse, younger, and a home to immigrants. While most other countries struggle profoundly with immigration and religious and racial differences, America is on a path to multicultural identity. These revolutions in the economy, society, and culture are also producing an American majority that embraces new values and new politics. Republicans are waging a counter-revolution, which is why America appears, at first glance, to be gridlocked and why the country is turning to Democrats to take on the country's growing challenges. In this incisive book, expert strategist Stanley B. Greenberg draws on years of research and polling to illuminate how America is far from being gridlocked, and he articulates a powerful vision of how American politics and America can be renewed.
Good to Great
Jim Collins
Built to Last, the defining management study of the '90s, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. But what about companies that are not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Are there those that convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? If so, what are the distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? Over five years, Jim Collins and his research team have analyzed the histories of 28 companies, discovering why some companies make the leap and others don't. The findings include: • Level 5 Leadership: A surprising style, required for greatness • The Hedgehog Concept: Finding your three circles, to transcend the curse of competence • A Culture of Discipline: The alchemy of great results • Technology Accelerators: How good-to-great companies think differently about technology • The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Why those who do frequent restructuring fail to make the leap
The Three Mothers
Anna Malaika Tubbs
2021 NPR Best Book of the Year This program is read by the author. Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes. Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These three extraordinary women passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning - from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced. These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America’s racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families’ safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers. These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books "The Three Mothers is a fascinating exploration into the lives of three women ignored by history after raising sons who helped shape a movement. By tracing the intellectual, political, and emotional strands of each woman’s life, Anna Malaika Tubbs uncovers hidden complexities within black motherhood that illuminate our understanding of the past while also shedding light on the overlooked contributions of black women today. An eye-opening, engrossing read!" (Brit Bennet, New York Times best-selling author of The Vanishing Half and The Mothers) "Anna's connection to these women is palpable on the page - as both a mother and a scholar of the impact Black motherhood has had on America. Through Anna's writing, Berdis, Alberta, and Louise's stories sing. Theirs is a history forgotten that begs to be told, and Anna tells it brilliantly." (Ibram X. Kendi, number one New York Times best-selling author of How to Be an Antiracist and National Book Award winner Stamped from the Beginning)
The Uptown Local
Cory Leadbeater
A brilliant debut memoir about a young writer—struggling with depression, family issues, and addiction—and his life-changing decade working for Joan Didion As an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days of childhood, Cory had sought refuge from the rougher parts of life in the pages of books. Suddenly, he found himself the personal assistant to a titan of literature: Joan Didion. In the nine years that followed, Cory shared Joan’s rarefied world, transformed not only by her blazing intellect but by her generous friendship and mentorship. Together they recited poetry in the mornings, dined with Supreme Court justices, attended art openings, smoked a single cigarette before bed. But secretly, Cory was spiraling. He reeled from the death of a close friend. He spent his weekends at a federal prison, visiting his father as he served time for fraud. He struggled day after day to write the novel that would validate him as a real writer. And meanwhile, the forces of addiction and depression loomed large. In hypnotic prose that pulses with life and longing, The Uptown Local explores the fault lines of class, family, loss, and creativity. It is a love letter to a cultural icon—and a moving testament to the relationships that sustain us in the eternal pursuit of a life worth living.
Pulphead
John Jeremiah Sullivan
Named A Best Book of 2011 by the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Boston Globe and Entertainment Weekly A sharp-eyed, uniquely humane tour of America's cultural landscape - from high to low to lower than low - by the award-winning young star of the literary nonfiction world. In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us - with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that's all his own - how we really (no, really) live now. In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a 19th-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV's Real World, who've generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina - and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we've never heard told this way. It's like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we've never imagined to be true. Of course we don't know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection - it's our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan's work.
Interior States
Meghan O'Gieblyn
Winner of The Believer Book Award for Nonfiction "Meghan O'Gieblyn's deep and searching essays are written with a precise sort of skepticism and a slight ache in the heart. A first-rate and riveting collection." (Lorrie Moore) A fresh, acute, and even profound collection that centers around two core (and related) issues of American identity: faith in general and the specific forms Christianity takes in particular; and the challenges of living in the Midwest when culture is felt to be elsewhere. What does it mean to be a believing Christian and a Midwesterner in an increasingly secular America where the cultural capital is retreating to both coasts? The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country". She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still", and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the 15 superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection. The subjects of these essays range from the rebranding (as it were) of Hell in contemporary Christian culture ("Hell"), a theme park devoted to the concept of intelligent design ("Species of Origin"), the paradoxes of Christian Rock ("Sniffing Glue"), Henry Ford's reconstructed pioneer town of Greenfield Village and its mixed messages ("Midwest World"), and the strange convergences of Christian eschatology and the digital so-called Singularity ("Ghosts in the Cloud"). Meghan O'Gieblyn stands in relation to her native Midwest as Joan Didion stands in relation to California - which is to say a wholehearted lover, albeit one riven with ambivalence at the same time.
Gate of the Sun
Elias Khoury
Gate of the Sun: Bab al-Shams is the first true magnum opus of the Palestinian saga. Through the passing of the beloved midwife and matriarch of the Shatila refugee camp outside Beirut, the listener enters a world of displacement, fear, and tenuous hope. A doctor tells a story to a man in a coma in an attempt to keep him alive. The patient, Yunes, is from Galilee, where he left Nahla, the love of his life. The novel unfolds at his bedside through Dr. Khalil’s intimate and haunting flights of memory. Khoury humanizes the complex Palestinian/Israeli struggle for us, shedding light on the turbulent history with love and empathy. Khoury opens up a whole new territory, envisioning a place where confronting pain and humiliation might lead, if not to reconciliation, then at last to finding an element of the other in one’s self. “Us” and “Them” become inextricably entwined through this realigned 1001 Nights. Originally published in Beirut in 1998, the novel has been a sensation throughout the Arab world, in Israel, and throughout Europe.
The Extinction of Experience
Christine Rosen
A reflective, original invitation to recover and cultivate the human experiences that have atrophied in our virtual world. We embraced the mediated life—from Facetune and Venmo to meme culture and the Metaverse—because these technologies offer novelty and convenience. But they also transform our sense of self and warp the boundaries between virtual and real. What are the costs? Who are we in a disembodied world? In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control. To recover our humanity and come back to the real world, we must reclaim serendipity, community, patience, and risk.
The Vampire: A Casebook
Alan Dundes
Finally, the truth about vampires. Vampires are the most fearsome and fascinating of all creatures of folklore. For the first time, detailed accounts of the vampire and how its tradition developed in different cultures are gathered in one volume by eminent folklorist Alan Dundes. Leading scholars from the fields of Slavic studies, history, anthropology, and psychiatry unearth the true nature of the vampire from its birth in graveyard lore to the modern-day psychiatric patient with a penchant for drinking blood. The Vampire: A Casebook takes this legend out of the realm of literature and film and back to its dark beginnings in folk traditions. The essays examine the history of the word "vampire"; Romanian vampires; Greek vampires; Serbian vampires; the physical attributes of vampires; the killing of vampires; and the possible psychoanalytic underpinnings of vampires. Much more than simply a scary creature of the human imagination, the vampire has been and continues to haunt the lives of all those who encounter it - in reality or in fiction. The book is published by University of Wisconsin Press.
Transcendental Style in Film
Paul Schrader
With a new introduction, acclaimed director and screenwriter Paul Schrader revisits and updates his contemplation of slow cinema over the past fifty years. Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state by means of austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment. This seminal text analyzes the film style of three great directors—Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Dreyer—and posits a common dramatic language used by these artists from divergent cultures. The new edition updates Schrader’s theoretical framework and extends his theory to the works of Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia), Béla Tarr (Hungary), Theo Angelopoulos (Greece), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey), among others. This key work by one of our most searching directors and writers is widely cited and used in film and art classes. With evocative prose and nimble associations, Schrader consistently urges readers and viewers alike to keep exploring the world of the art film. This audiobook is skillfully read by Phil Thron and was produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont. Audio engineering by Mike Thal. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
The Black Box
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.” — Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste“This is a literary history of Black America, but it is also an argument that African American history is inextricable from the history of African American literature.” —The New York TimesA magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country’s history.Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—these writers used words to create a livable world—a "home" —for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society.It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a community formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal sub-human bondage, transformed itself through the word into a community whose foundational definition was based on overcoming one of history’s most pernicious lies. This collective act of resistance and transcendence is at the heart of its self-definition as a "community." Out of that contested ground has flowered a resilient, creative, powerful, diverse culture formed by people who have often disagreed markedly about what it means to be "Black," and about how best to shape a usable past out of the materials at hand to call into being a more just and equitable future. This is the epic story of how, through essays and speeches, novels, plays, and poems, a long line of creative thinkers has unveiled the contours of—and resisted confinement in—the "black box" inside which this "nation within a nation" has been assigned, willy nilly, from the nation’s founding through to today. This is a book that records the compelling saga of the creation of a people.
White Girls
Hilton Als
"This book will change you." (Chicago Tribune) White Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Eminem, Louise Brooks, and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is one of the most daring and provocative books of recent years, an invaluable guide to the culture of our time. Cover photograph: World's Fair, New York, 1964 © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Hot, Hot Chicken
Rachel Louise Martin
These days, hot chicken is a "must-try" Southern food. Restaurants in New York, Detroit, Cambridge, and even Australia advertise that they fry their chicken "Nashville-style." Thousands of people attend the Music City Hot Chicken Festival each year. The James Beard Foundation has given Prince's Chicken Shack an American Classic Award for inventing the dish. But for almost seventy years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville's Black neighborhoods—and the story of hot chicken says something powerful about race relations in Nashville, especially as the city tries to figure out what it will be in the future. Hot, Hot Chicken recounts the history of Nashville's Black communities through the story of its hot chicken scene from the Civil War, when Nashville became a segregated city, through the tornado that ripped through North Nashville in March 2020.
The Way of the Superior Man
David Deida
In the decades since the initial publication of The Way of the Superior Man, society has changed significantly. Issues of gender and sexuality long confined to secrecy have become part of everyday conversation, and rigid ideas about our societal roles have begun to dissolve. And yet, perhaps now more than at any time, men of all ages still “tussle with the challenges of women, work, and sexual desire.” In this unabridged audiobook of the classic guide to masculine spirituality, David Deida encourages men and women to lean into the conversation and offer their most valuable assets to the world—their authentic heart and depth of presence. More relevant than ever, The Way of the Superior Man offers a view of a more conscious and embodied masculinity. “It is time to evolve beyond the macho jerk ideal, all spine and no heart”, writes Deida. “It is also time to evolve beyond the sensitive and caring wimp ideal, all heart and no spine.” Including a new preface written in celebration of the book’s 20th anniversary, The Way of the Superior Man presents the next generation of with the opportunity to grapple with fear, cultivate trust in the moment, and put forth the best versions of themselves in an ever-changing world. Read by Cecil Archbold.
Walt Whitman’s America
David S Reynolds
In his poetry, Walt Whitman set out to encompass all of America, and in so doing, heal its deepening divisions. This magisterial biography demonstrates the epic scale of his achievement, as well as the dreams and anxieties that impelled it, for it places the poet securely within the political and cultural context of his age. Combing through the full range of Whitman’s writing, David Reynolds shows how Whitman gathered inspiration from every stratum of 19th-century American life: the convulsions of slavery and depression; the raffish dandyism of the Bowery “b’hoys”; the exuberant rhetoric of actors, orators, and divines. We see how Whitman reconciled his own sexuality with contemporary social mores and how his energetic courtship of the public presaged the vogues of advertising and celebrity. Brilliantly researched, captivatingly told, Walt Whitman’s America is a triumphant work of scholarship that breathes new life into the biographical genre.
Intersecting Voices
Iris Marion Young
Iris Marion Young is known for her ability to connect theory to public policy and practical politics in ways easily understood by a wide range of readers. This collection of essays, which extends her work on feminist theory, explores questions such as the meaning of moral respect and the ways individuals relate to social collectives, together with timely issues like welfare reform, same-sex marriage, and drug treatment for pregnant women. One of the many goals of Intersecting Voices is to energize thinking in those areas where women and men are still deprived of social justice. Essays on the social theory of groups, communication across difference, alternative principles for family law, exclusion of single mothers from full citizenship, and the ambiguous value of home lead to questions important for rethinking policy. How can women be conceptualized as a single social collective when there are so many differences among them? What spaces of discourse are required for the full inclusion of women and cultural minorities in public discussion? Can the conceptual and practical link between self-sufficiency and citizenship that continues to relegate some people to second-class status be broken? How could legal institutions be formed to recognize the actual plurality of family forms? In formulating such questions and the answers to them, Young draws upon ideas from both Anglo-American and Continental philosophers, including Seyla Benhabib, Joshua Cohen, Luce Irigaray, Susan Okin, William Galston, Simone de Beauvoir, and Michel Foucault.
The Bilingual Brain
Albert Costa, John W. Schwieter - translator
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa. How do two languages coexist in the same brain? Why is it possible to forget a language? What are the advantages and challenges of being bilingual? Over half of the world's population is bilingual, and yet this fascinating, complex ability is understood by few. In The Bilingual Brain, leading expert Albert Costa explores the science of language through a wide range of cutting-edge studies and examples from South Korea to Spain and Canada. Looking at the development of the brain from infancy to old age, Costa shows us the impact of bilingualism on everyday life: from a bilingual's ability to multitask and make decisions to the way in which they interact with those around them. An absorbing examination of an extraordinary skill, The Bilingual Brain leaves us all with a sense of wonder at how language works. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Earthly Bodies
Vanessa Chakour
Examining the cultural belief that our animal instincts are to be corrected or corralled, nature advocate and rewilding facilitator Vanessa Chakour explores our inner and outer landscapes through the lens of wild animals. How can wolves, misunderstood in myths but vital to ecosystems, teach us to rewrite dangerous stories and respect nature’s wisdom? How do the peaceful coexistence strategies of black bears offer insights into sharing resources? How can the engineering feats of beavers guide us in fostering regenerative building solutions and vibrant ecosystems? What can the loyal partnership of seahorses teach us about nurturing and love? In Earthly Bodies, Vanessa draws parallels from struggles she has weathered in her own life to those endured by twenty-three wild animals—from wolves to sea lions—exploring our unease of feeling like prey; challenging the entrapment of our limiting beliefs; contextualizing the turmoil of fractured landscapes; and affirming our primal ache to belong. Vanessa’s pivotal encounters with creatures in sync with their primal rhythms and demands illustrate the necessity of relying on the intelligence of gut instinct; of the magnetic pull of attraction; of the body’s mandate for restorative rest; and of the sacred bonds of love. We often cut ourselves off from identifying with wild animals—like wolves, foxes, bats and bears, and other animal relatives—out of fear, ignorance, disgust, or misunderstanding, yet our earthly human bodies can lead us in our pursuits of pleasure, love, wonder, healing, and connection. With each section containing an aspect of injured animal’s return home to their natural habitat, and—in our case—to an embodied, instinctual self, Earthly Bodies meditates on how this journey from enclosures, to rehabilitation, to soft release, and finally to homing raises questions about our humanity. In so learning, we understand how we might benefit from embracing our own animal nature to gain deeper self-actualization, find common ground with our fellow animals, and learn to thrive together.
Firebrand
Joshua Knelman
"You’ll inhale this tell-all book about the tobacco industry and never look at a No Smoking sign the same way again!"—Margaret Atwood, via Twitter Mad Men meets Bad Blood in this addictive, behind-the-scenes globe-trotting narrative of moral ambiguity, law, public policy, and big tobacco. “Given everything the lawyer knew up to that point about smoking, as far as he could tell, cigarettes shouldn’t even have been available as a mass market product...” It's the start of the new millennium and a young lawyer is recruited to work for an unnamed multinational company. It isn't until his second interview that the product the company produces is revealed to him: cigarettes. Possibly the most controversial consumer product in human history: seductive, addictive, and deadly—yet completely legal. Over the next decade, he travels the world as he works as legal counsel to successfully market cigarettes in dozens of countries. Firebrand ventures into the heart of the tobacco industry and the icy paradoxes of capitalism, each chapter a counterintuitive lesson on how cigarette companies—the target of increasingly intense anti-smoking campaigns and government regulations, including the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report and 200-billion-dollar debt of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement—continue to pivot and thrive in the 21st century, inhaling profits from their one billion smokers worldwide. As Mad Men did for the alcohol-fueled, oversexed, corrupt world of New York advertising, Firebrand does for the even more despised world of big tobacco, in an addictive, behind-the-scenes piece of storytelling. The lawyer’s work takes him from manufacturing factories to hocking “sticks” at UK corner store counters; from tacky resorts in Spain and pirate city-states to luxury hotels and Grand Prix events across European and Asian cities. A contemporary tale of our ambiguous times, told with character-based drive and dry humour, Firebrand is a grand tour of the compelling paradoxes of globalization and corporate culture, shrink-wrapped in an engrossing narrative of a morally dubious yet completely legal enterprise. “This is storytelling at its best. Wry observation, compelling narrative, fascinating characters, page-turning writing, and an age-old question driving it all...”—Joel Bakan, author of The New Corporation: How ‘Good’ Corporations are Bad for Democracy