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The asking : new and selected poems
by Jane Hirshfield
"The Asking opens with new and urgent poems by Jane Hirshfield, in which she faces again the contradictions that have shaped her work: "Some take/ in witnessed suffering, pleasure," she writes. "Some make, of witnessed suffering, beauty." The volume thenreturns to the beginning, carrying us from her earliest volumes (including Of Gravity and Angels; Given Sugar, Given Salt; and After), up through the important recent work (Come, Thief; The Beauty; Ledger). We find poems of the smallest ant and the vastness of time, of hunger and bounty, of science and war and love in its myriad forms. Whether it is Hirshfield's insistence on the lessons of the natural world-"The lake scarlets / the same instant as the maple. / Let others try to say this is not passion"-or her facing squarely the depredations of climate and the harm to fellow human beings by our own hands; whether she is assessing what language does for us ("Words are loyal. / Whatever they name they take the side of") or interrogating poetry itself as avibrant, living medium through which her own debt to creation's splendors must be paid, this poet sets our shared truths in black ink. The Asking, in poems of delicacy and ringing clarity, demands our attention to beauty and injustice equally, enlarging our awareness of breakage as well as the possibility for repair"
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Little Avalanches
by Becky Ellis
A daughter’s quest for truth. A soldier’s fight for survival. Their shared search for understanding.
Little Avalanches is a gorgeously written memoir of breathtaking scope that propels readers from the beaches of California in the early ‘70s to the battlefields of World War II.
As a young girl, Becky is forced to hide from phantom Nazis, subjected to dental procedures without pain medication, and torn from her mother again and again. Growing up in the shadow of her father’s PTSD, she wants to know what is wrong but knows not to ask.
Her father won’t talk about being a Timberwolf, a unit of specially trained night fighters that went into combat first and experienced a 300 percent casualty rate. He returns home with thirteen medals, including a Silver Star, and becomes a doctor and well-respected member of the community, but is haunted by his past.
Seeing only his explosive and often dangerous personality, Becky distances herself from the man she wants to love. Yet on the eve of his ninetieth birthday, when Becky looks at the vulnerable man he’s become, something shifts, and she asks about the war. He breaks seventy years of silence, offering an unfiltered account of war without glory and revealing the extent of the trauma he’s endured. She spends the next several years interviewing, researching, and ultimately understanding the demons she inherited.
Because his story is incomplete without hers, and hers is inconceivable without his, Ellis offers both, as well as their year-long aching conversation marked by moments of redeeming grace. With compassionate, unflinching writing, Little Avalanches reminds us that we are profoundly shaped by the secrets we keep and forever changed by the stories we share.
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Chorus of the Union : how Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas set aside their rivalry to save the nation
by Ted McClelland
"Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas are a misunderstood duo. History remembers them as antagonists, and for most of the years the two men knew each other, they were. In the 1830s, they debated politics around the stove in the back of Joshua Speed's store in Springfield, Illinois. In the 1850s, they disagreed over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and debated slavery as opponents for a Senate seat. In 1860, they both ran for president. Lincoln and Douglas ended as allies, though, against the greatest threat-slavery-that our country has ever faced. When Douglas realized he was going to lose the 1860 election, he stopped campaigning for himself and went South to persuade the slave states to accept Lincoln as president. After that effort failed, and the newly formed Confederate States of America bombed Fort Sumter, Douglas met with Lincoln to discuss raising an army. The story of how Lincoln and Douglas put aside their rivalry to work together for the preservation of the Union has important lessons for our time. We have just been through a presidential election where the loser refused to concede defeat, with violent consequences. Not only did Douglas accept his loss, he spent the final days of his campaign barnstorming the country to build support for his opponent's impending victory, setting aside his long-held desire for the presidency for the higher principle of national unity. Also, by focusing on the importance of Illinois to Lincoln's political development, Chorus of the Union will challenge the notion that hewas an indispensable "great man." Lincoln was the right person to lead the country through the Civil War, but he became president because he was from the right place. Living in Illinois provided Lincoln the opportunity to confront Douglas over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The debates with Douglas during the 1858 Senate campaign brought him the fame and prestige to contend for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. Lincoln's moderate views on slavery, which he developed in the swing region of a swingstate, made him the ideal candidate for an election that had sweeping historical consequences"
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The age of magical overthinking : notes on modern irrationality
by Amanda Montell
Utilizing her linguistic insights and sociological explorations, the best-selling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult delves into the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, including“magical thinking,” offering a prevailing message of hope, empathy and forgiveness for our anxiety-riddled human selves.
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| The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis by George StephanopoulosPolitical commentator and former presidential advisor George Stephanopoulos offers a peek behind the curtain at America's most famous residence in this compelling history of the Situation Room, the White House communications hub where consequential decisions are made. Try this next: The Hidden History of the White House: Power Struggles, Scandals, and Defining Moments by Corey Mead. |
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Forage & feast : recipes for bringing wild plants & mushrooms to your table
by Chrissy Tracey
Interwoven with stories from her own foraging and culinary experiences, the author focuses on seasonally available foraged ingredients, from urban magnolia blooms and easy-to-find dandelions to forest floor King Bolete mushrooms and sweet pawpaws and features detailed guides to identifying them as well as photographs of their natural habitat. Illustrations.
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Writing AI prompts
by Stephanie Diamond
Guiding you down the path of becoming an“AI psychologist” capable of getting all types of output from IS systems, this authoritative resource walks you through the process of mining great results from leading platforms so you can save time, solve problems, explore creative ideas, conduct research and beyond. Original.
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Billy the Kid : el bandido simpâatico
by James B. Mills
"In the annals of American frontier history, few people left behind such a lasting and far-reaching fame as Billy the Kid. Almost everyone knows his most famous alias. Even if they don't know the detailed or minimal particulars of his existence, they have heard the name somewhere. Henry McCarty alias William H. Bonney ceased to exist in the public eye during his own lifetime and was eclipsed by a legendary persona that still endures today. When and how did such a seemingly imperishable legend begin to take form? Some have suggested the legend of Billy the Kid began with his death at the end of Pat Garrett's revolver on the night of July 14, 1881, in Fort Sumner. Others believe the legend began with his unforgettable jailbreak in Lincoln, New Mexico, several months prior on April 28, 1881. Others still suggest his legend began with the publication of Walter Noble Burns's The Saga of Billy the Kid in 1926. As the reader will find, the legend of Billy the Kid began in the winter of 1880, and still stands asa testament to the lasting influence of a hyperbolic nineteenth century press. James B. Mills has left no stone unturned in his twenty-year quest to tell the complete story of Billy the Kid. He explores the Kid's still disputable origins, his family's movements from New York into the Southwest, his becoming orphaned on the frontier, the Lincoln County War, his dealings with Governor Lew Wallace, his many friends, his enemies, his outlaw exploits, his loves, his character, his death, and his legacy. Most important, Mills is the first historian to fully detail the Kid's relations with New Mexicans of Spanish descent. So, the question remains, who really was the person the world knows as Billy the Kid? Was he the young reprobate committed to a life of crime, who relished becoming a famous outlaw and cold-blooded, self-absorbed "sociopath" or "thug" that some still prefer him-need him-to be? Or was he in fact, the generally good-hearted, generous, courteous, young vigilante that so many remembered with considerable fondness, who ultimately preferred the company of the more peaceable descendants of Spanish settlers than his own Anglo race? ÅQuiâen Es? Who is it? Can the same question that was on Billy's lips during his final moments be answered in relation tohis own nature? In this groundbreaking study, Mills cuts through the many layers of mythos and misconceptions and takes the reader closer to the flesh and blood human being named Henry McCarty alias William H. Bonney than ever before"
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The loves of Theodore Roosevelt : the women who created a president
by Edward F. O'Keefe
Celebrating the five extraordinary yet unsung women who profoundly shaped the life of one of America's most significant presidents, this spirited and poignant family love story reveals Theodore Roosevelt, an icon of rugged American masculinity, as we've never seen him before. Illustrations.
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The Formula : how rogues, geniuses, and speed freaks reengineered F1 into the world's fastest-growing sport
by Joshua Robinson
"WALL STREET JOURNAL reporters and authors of THE CLUB, Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg tell the riveting saga of how Formula 1 broke through in America, detailing the eclectic culture of racing obsessives, glamorous settings, gearheads, engineering geniuses, dashing racers, and bitter rivalries that have made F1 the world's fastest growing sport. For decades in America, car racing meant NASCAR, and to a lesser extent IndyCar, with Formula 1--the wealthiest racing league in the world--a distant third.Fast forward to 2023, and F1 has emerged at the front of the pack powered by a passionate yet nascent American fanbase. The F1 juggernaut has arrived, but this checkered flag was far from inevitable. In THE FORMULA, WALL STREET JOURNAL reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg tell the epic story of how F1 saved itself from collapse and finally conquered America through guile, fearlessness, and above all, reinvention. With fast cars, big money, glamorous locales, and beautiful people as the backdrop, THE FORMULA reveals how F1's sudden arrival in the US was actually decades in the making, a product of the sport's near-constant state of transformation and experimentation. Bringing unique insight and access to F1's most storied teams and personalities--from Ferrari to Bernie Ecclestone to Christian Horner to Lewis Hamilton--THE FORMULA offers a riveting portrait of the drivers, corporations, cars, rivalries, and audacious gambles that have shaped the sport for half a century. The end result is a high-octane history of how modern F1 racing came to be--the first book to tell the story of the outrageous successes and spectacular crashes that led F1 to this extraordinary yet precarious moment. More than just a sports story, THE FORMULA is the tale of a disrupter that broke into the crowded American sports marketplace and claimed its place through cash, personality, and a new understanding of what a sport needs to be in the age of wall-to-wall entertainment"
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Muse of fire : World War I as seen through the lives of the soldier poets
by Michael Korda
"His epic narrative begins with Rupert Brooke, "the handsomest young man in England" and perhaps its most famous young poet in the halcyon days of the Edwardian Age, and ends five years later with Wilfred Owen, killed in action at twenty-five, only one week before the armistice. With bitter irony, Owen's mother received the telegram informing her of his death on November 11, just as church bells tolled to celebrate the war's end. Korda's dramatic account, which includes anecdotes from his own family history, not only brings to life the soldier poets but paints an unforgettable picture of life and death in the trenches, and the sacrifice of an entire generation. His cast of characters includes the young American poet Alan Seeger, who was killed in action as a private in the French Foreign Legion; Isaac Rosenberg, whose parents had fled czarist anti-Semitic persecution and who was killed in action at the age of twenty-eight before his fame as a poet and a painter was recognized; Robert Graves and SiegfriedSassoon, whose friendship and friendly rivalry endured through long, complicated private lives; and, finally, Owen, whose fame came only posthumously and whose poetry remains some of the most savage and heartbreaking to emerge from the cataclysmic war"
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Messi / : The Definitive Biography
by Guillem Balaguâe
As Lionel Messi raised the World Cup triumphantly into the air, the world watched on in awe. Messi's final peak conquered; his final dream achieved. It was the fairy tale ending to a glittering career. Yet despite delivering Argentina their third World Cup, Messi's time at Paris Saint-Germain came to a dramatic conclusion, and Miami awaited the Argentinian legend. Guillem Balaguâe has had unprecedented access to Messi's inner circle including the player himself: his coaches, team-mates and family. From tracing the origins of Messi's precocious talent in Rosario, Argentina, to chronicling his peerless seventeen-season career at Barcelona, and his tumultuous Parisian adventure, Guillem takes us behind-the-scenes of Messi's World Cup triumph and his long-desired move to the MLS. This is an epic, authoritative and compelling account of an enigmatic footballing genius. -- Back cover
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The backyard bird chronicles
by Amy Tan
Mapping the passage of time through daily entries, thoughtful questions and beautiful original sketches, the best-selling author of The Joy Luck Club shares her search for solace which turned into an opportunity to connect with nature in a meaningful way and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired. Illustrations.
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The struggle for Taiwan : a history of America, China, and the island caught between
by Sulmaan Wasif Khan
From the White Terror all the way to Trump-era rising tensions, this first comprehensive history of the triangular relationship between the U.S., China and Taiwan shows how decision-makers must heed the lessons of the past to avoid war, charting the paths to our present predicament to show what futures might be possible. Maps.
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Becoming Earth : how our planet came to life
by Ferris Jabr
A leading new voice in science writing looks at how our planet became the world we know, how it is quickly changing and what we can do to help determine the kind of Earth our descendants inherit. Illustrations.
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The singularity is nearer : when we merge with Al
by Ray Kurzweil
Since it was first published in 2005, Ray Kurzweils The Singularity Is Near Duckworth and its vision of the future have been influential in spawning a worldwide movement with millions of followers, hundreds of books, and major films Her, Lucy, Ex Machina. During the succeeding decade many of his predictions about tech advancements have been borne out. In this entirely new book Kurzweil takes a fresh perspective on advances in the singularity - assessing many of his predictions and examining the novel advancements to a revolution in knowledge and an expansion of human potential.
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Boymom : reimagining boyhood in the age of impossible masculinity
by Ruth Whippman
This deep dive into the complexities of raising boys in the face of the many cultural messages they face that leave them anxious, emotionally repressed and socially isolated offers ways to help them overcome the confines of masculine expectations.
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Love & Whiskey : The Remarkable True Story of Jack Daniel, His Master Distiller Nearest Green, and the Improbable Rise of Uncle Nearest
by Fawn Weaver
Set against the backdrop of Lynchburg, Tennessee, this narrative weaves together a thrilling blend of personal discovery, historical investigation, and the revelation of a story long overshadowed by time. Through extensive research, personal interviews, and the uncovering of long-buried documents, Weaver brings to light not only the remarkable bond between Nearest Green and Jack Daniel but also Daniel’s concerted efforts during his lifetime to ensure Green’s legacy would not be forgotten. This deep respect for his teacher, mentor, and friend was mirrored in Jack's dedication to ensuring that the stories and achievements of Nearest Green's descendants, who continued the tradition of working side by side with Jack and his descendants, would also not be forgotten.
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Just add water : my swimming life
by Katie Ledecky
In this candid and inspiring memoir of a true competitor, a three-time Olympian, a seven-time gold medalist and a world record-holder in individual swimming events charts her life in swimming, from discovering the joy of the pool to developing a champion's mindset that has allowed her to persevere. Illustrations.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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