"After spending her early years in Wuhan, China, riding water buffalos and devouring stinky tofu, Laura immigrates to Texas, where her hometown is as foreign as Mars--at least until 2020, when COVID-19 makes Wuhan a household name. In Messy Roots, Laura illustrates her coming-of-age as the girl who simply wants to make the basketball team, escape Chinese school, and figure out why girls make her heart flutter. Insightful, original, and hilarious,...

"Highly sought-after writer and speaker shares her heartbreakingly beautiful narrative to inspire you to believe that the messy, muddy parts of life are just the first mile on the road to redemption"--

Olivia Martindale drives to Montana in a blizzard, the storm reflecting her inner turmoil. She is trying to adopt two sisters, but it seems their abusive biological mother may soon regain custody. When Olivia's car plunges toward an icy river, her almost ex-husband, Jace, arrives to pull them to safety. Olivia and her precocious girls receive a heartwarming welcome from her gentle grandmother, blunt mother, and outspoken sister. This multigenerational...

"After a messy year of heartbreak and setbacks, Tara sets off to Ireland in search of clues to her family's ancestry, but what she finds isn't at all what she expected. Some of it has to do with the lack of records, but a lot has to do with John, the charming cartoonist she met on Twitter. Wrapped in real family history and set amongst the natural beauty of the Irish countryside, Roots is a classic romantic-comedy adventure and a page-turning account...

In his book, The Monster at Our Door, Mike Davis warned of a coming global threat of viral catastrophes. Now in this expanded edition of that 2005 book, Davis explains how the problems he warned of remain, and he sets the Covid-19 pandemic in the context of previous disastrous outbreaks, notably the 1918 influenza disaster that killed at least forty million people in three months and the Avian flu of a decade and a half ago. The author surveys the...

The author of the best-selling book What the Best College Teachers Do is back with more humane, doable, and inspiring help, this time for students who want to get the most out of college--and every other educational enterprise, too.

Pearl doesn't know how she's ended up in the river--the same messy, cacophonous river in the same rain-soaked valley she'd been stuck in for years. But here her spirit swirls and stays . . . Ada, Pearl's daughter, doesn't know how she's ended up back in the house she left thirteen years ago--with no heating apart from a fire she can't light, no way of getting around apart from an old car she's scared to drive, and no company apart from her own young...

We depend on--we believe in--algorithms to help us get a ride, choose which book to buy, execute a mathematical proof. It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to reveal what we need to know and even what we want. Humans have always believed that certain invocations--the marriage vow, the shaman's curse--do not merely describe the world but make it. Computation casts a cultural shadow that is shaped by this long tradition of magical...

"Molly Caro May grew up as part of a nomadic family, one proud of their international sensibilities, a tribe that never settled in one place for very long. Growing up moving from foreign country to foreign country, just like her father and grandfather, she became attached to her identity as a global woman from nowhere. But, on the verge of turning thirty years old, everything changed. Molly and her fiance; Chris suddenly move to 107 acres in Montana,...

"It is a complex time to be a parent. Our climate is in crisis, and economic inequality is deepening. Racialized violence is spreading, and school shootings are escalating. How do we, as parents, cultivate in our children a love of the earth, a cry for justice, and a commitment to nonviolence? Where do we place our bodies so we teach our kids that resistance is crucial and change is possible? What practices do we hold as a family to encourage them...