Nonfiction
Irl: Finding Our Real Selves in a Digital World
"A must-read." --Buzzfeed
It's reflexive and common to view our online presence as fake; to see the internet as a space we enter when we aren't living our real, offline lives. But ever since a pandemic pushed more and more of our work, relationships, and even leisure into digital space, the internet doesn't feel so fake anymore. Every day, the lines between digital and "real" space blur even further.
Activist and writer Chris Stedman explores authenticity in the digital age, shining a light into and beyond age-old notions of realness--who we are and where we fit in the world--to bring fresh understanding for our increasingly online lives. Stedman offers a new way of seeing the supposed split between our online and offline selves, one in which online spaces and social media become new tools for understanding and expressing ourselves--and where the not-always-graceful ways we use these tools can reveal new insights for incorporating far older human truths into modern life. How might the online spaces we use fulfill our essential human need to feel real? Must we view the internet and the real world as binary, where there is no room for overlap? Playful and wise, Stedman suggests that the digital search for meaning and belonging presents challenges but also opportunities to become more fully human. He boldly invites us to embrace realness in all its uncertainty, online and off, no matter how risky it might feel.
Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos
Why do you exist? How did atoms and molecules transform into sentient creatures that experience longing, regret, compassion, and even marvel at their own existence? What does it truly mean to have a mind--to think? Science has offered few answers to these existential questions until now.
Journey of the Mind is the first book to offer a unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, self-awareness, and civilization arose incrementally out of chaos. The journey begins three billion years ago with the emergence of the universe's simplest possible mind. From there, the book explores the nanoscopic archaeon, whose thinking machinery consists of a handful of molecules, then advances through amoebas, worms, frogs, birds, monkeys, and humans, explaining what each "new" mind could do that previous minds could not. Though they admire the triumph of human consciousness, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam argue that humans are hardly the most sophisticated minds on the planet. The same physical principles that produce human self-awareness are leading cities and nation-states to develop "superminds," and perhaps planting the seeds for even higher forms of consciousness.
Written in lively, accessible language accompanied by vivid illustrations, Journey of the Mind is a mind-bending work of popular science, the first general book to share the cutting-edge mathematical basis for consciousness, language, and the self. It shows how a "unified theory of the mind" can explain the mind's greatest mysteries--and offer clues about the ultimate fate of all minds in the universe.
Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
"A shining reminder to learn all we can from this moment, rebuilding ourselves in the darkness so that we may come out wiser, kinder, and stronger on the other side." --The Boston Globe
"Powerful essays on loss, endurance, and renewal." --People For fans of Glennon Doyle, Cheryl Strayed, and Anne Lamott, a collection of quotes and essays on facing life's challenges with creativity, courage, and resilience. When Maggie Smith, the award-winning author of the viral poem "Good Bones," started writing inspirational daily Twitter posts in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. In this deeply moving book of quotes and essays, Maggie writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe
"We should welcome the context Kundera gives for the struggles between Russia and Europe, and the plight of those caught between them. His defense of small languages, small cultures, and small nations feels pressing."--Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine
"Kundera focuses on the relationship of Europe's central 'small nations' like Czechoslovakia and Ukraine to Western culture and argues that their cultural identities were increasingly threatened."--New York Book Review
A short collection of brilliant early essays that offers a fascinating context for Milan Kundera's subsequent career and holds a mirror to much recent European history. It is also remarkably prescient with regard to Russia's current aggression in Ukraine and its threat to the rest of Europe.
Milan Kundera's early nonfiction work feels especially resonant in our own time. In these pieces, Kundera pleads the case of the "small nations" of Europe who, by culture, are Western with deep roots in Europe, despite Russia imposing its own Communist political regimes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Kundera warns that the real tragedy here is not Russia but Europe, whose own identity and culture are directly challenged and threatened in a way that could lead to their destruction. He is sounding the alarm, which chimes loud and clear in our own twenty-first century.
The 1983 essay translated by Edmund White ("The Tragedy of Central Europe"), and the 1967 lecture delivered to the Czech Writers' Union in the middle of the Prague Spring by the young Milan Kundera ("Literature and the Small Nations"), translated for the first time by Linda Asher, are both written in a voice that is at once personal, vehement, and anguished. Here, Kundera appears already as one of our great European writers and truly our contemporary. Each piece is prefaced by a short presentation by French historian Pierre Nora and Czech-born French political scientist Jacques Rupnik.
Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America
Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future
Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality
The 40-year history of how Democrats chose political opportunity over addressing inequality--and how the poor have paid the price
For decades, the Republican Party has been known as the party of the rich: arguing for "business-friendly" policies like deregulation and tax cuts. But this incisive political history shows that the current inequality crisis was also enabled by a Democratic Party that catered to the affluent. The result is one of the great missed opportunities in political history: a moment when we had the chance to change the lives of future generations and were too short-sighted to take it. Historian Lily Geismer recounts how the Clinton-era Democratic Party sought to curb poverty through economic growth and individual responsibility rather than asking the rich to make any sacrifices. Fueled by an ethos of "doing well by doing good," microfinance, charter schools, and privately funded housing developments grew trendy. Though politically expedient and sometimes profitable in the short term, these programs fundamentally weakened the safety net for the poor. This piercingly intelligent book shows how bygone policy decisions have left us with skyrocketing income inequality and poverty in America and widened fractures within the Democratic Party that persist to this day.Library Book
Librorum Ridiculorum: A Compendium of Bizarre Books
A celebration of all the weird and wonderful books to be found at an antiquarian bookshop.
Books have the power to enrich the soul, to enliven the senses, to expand our horizons... and others are simply mad. This wonderful celebration of the oddest books ever published is a treat for all bibliophiles, booksellers and fans of the bizarre. It is an exploration of the most eccentric titles and covers from our past, that have inexplicably fallen out of print but should never be forgotten.
Gems include:
Scouts in Bondage
Frog Raising for Pleasure and Profit
Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented
Drummer Dick's Discharge
Lift-the-flap Questions and Answers about Space
Little Book of Jewish Celebrations
Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama
New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti reveals an inside look at the historically close, complicated, occasionally co-dependent, and at-times uncertain relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
Delving far deeper than the simplistic "bromance" narrative that's long held the public eye, The Long Alliance reveals the past, present, and future of the unusual partnership, detailing its development, its twists and turns, its ruptures and reunions, and its path to this pivotal moment for each man's legacy.
Look
Looking for the Hidden Folk
Lost in Summerland: Essays
Lots of Things to Know About Animals
Madison Women Remember: Growing Up in Wisconsin's Capital
Magic Hour: A Very Personal History of State Street
Starting a store sounded like fun, sort of like putting on a play. I'd get to write the script, design the production, be the lead actor, hire people I liked, and direct the whole thing! After a year of answering to bureaucrats in my job as coordinator of the new State Street Mall, it would be wonderful to be the boss of everything. But what about afterward? What if the show wasn't a hit? What if I couldn't pull a salary out of it? Later in my career I would understand that luck and timing were big factors in my success. In 1979, I had no grasp of national economics, but I did have a sense of something afoot. A strong new business cycle was brewing that few saw coming. I would open my store on State Street on the cusp of a retail boom at the height of the American Century, although I had only a faint sense of that yet. Nor did I have any idea that within a decade, it would all start to fall apart.
Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World's Last Frontier
"Gripping. ... Araujo's accretion of detail has a powerful effect, demonstrating how deeply the culture of violence has seeped into the social fabric of Amazonia -- and how hard it will be to eradicate." -- New York Times Book Review
"A raw account of the critical struggle between law and lawlessness on the world's last great frontier." -- Christian Science Monitor
In the tradition of Killers of the Flower Moon, a haunting murder mystery revealing the human story behind one of the most devastating crimes of our time: the ruthless destruction of the Amazon rain forest--and anyone who stands in the way
Deep in the heart of the Amazon, the city of Rondon do Pará, Brazil, lived for decades in the shadow of land barons, or fazendeiros, who maintained control of the region through unscrupulous land grabs and egregious human rights violations. They razed and burned the jungle, expelled small-scale farmers and Indigenous tribes from their lands, and treated their farmhands as slaves--all with impunity. The only true opposition came from Rondon's small but robust farmworkers' union, led by the charismatic Dezinho, who fought to put power back into the hands of the people who called the Amazon home. But when Dezinho was assassinated in cold blood, it seemed the farmworkers' struggle had come to a violent and fruitless end.
What no one anticipated was that this event would bring forth an unlikely hero: Dezinho's widow. Against great odds, and at extreme personal risk, Maria Joel, now a single mother of four young children, used her ingenuity and unwavering support from union members to bring her husband's killer to account in court. Her campaign gained unexpected momentum, helping to bring international attention to the dire situation in Rondon, from Brazil's president Lula to international celebrities and civil rights groups.
Maria Joel's fight for justice had far-reaching implications: it unearthed a chilling world of corruption and lawlessness rooted in Brazil's quest to turn the largest rain forest on earth into an economic frontier. As more details came out, it began to look increasingly likely that Dezinho's killer, a reluctant and inexperienced gunman, was just one piece of a larger criminal consortium, with ties leading all the way up to one of the region's most powerful and notorious fazendeiros of all.
Featuring groundbreaking revelations and exclusive interviews, this gripping work of narrative nonfiction is the culmination of journalist Heriberto Araujo's years-long investigation in the heart of the Amazon. Set against the backdrop of appalling deforestation rates and resultant superfires, Masters of the Lost Land vividly reveals the human story behind the loss of--and fierce crusade to protect--one of our greatest resources in the fight against climate change and one of the last wild places on earth.
Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas That Shape Our Reality
McCarthy's Field Guide to Grammar: Natural English Usage and Style
- A to Z format makes it easy to access and to find what you're looking for
- Presents solutions to a host of common, everyday grammatical problems
- References current events to bring relevance to the grammar (fronted adverbials anyone?)
- Looks at historical usage to illustrate how the English language has evolved, and continues to evolve
- Gives guidance on appropriate usage where more than one way of saying something exists
- Distinguishes between spoken and written grammar where appropriate
- includes advice on vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, punctuation and style
- Compares North American and British grammar, and includes Englishes from around the world
- Charming drawings to illustrate the playfulness in the English language
- Grammar guide backed by data and research True to the Chambers name, this field guide is as much quirky as it is informative. It is the perfect gift for any language lover, student, teacher, struggling parent or carer supporting their child's schooling, the grammar purist or the grammar descriptivist.
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
The New York Times and USA Today bestseller! This eye-opening book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
"Layla Saad is one of the most important and valuable teachers we have right now on the subject of white supremacy and racial injustice."--New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert
Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide, Me and White Supremacy takes readers on a 28-day journey, complete with journal prompts, to do the necessary and vital work that can ultimately lead to improving race relations.
Updated and expanded from the original workbook (downloaded by nearly 100,000 people), this critical text helps you take the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources, giving you the language to understand racism, and to dismantle your own biases, whether you are using the book on your own, with a book club, or looking to start family activism in your own home.
This book will walk you step-by-step through the work of examining:
Awareness leads to action, and action leads to change. For readers of White Fragility, White Rage, So You Want To Talk About Race, The New Jim Crow, How to Be an Anti-Racist and more who are ready to closely examine their own beliefs and biases and do the work it will take to create social change.
"Layla Saad moves her readers from their heads into their hearts, and ultimately, into their practice. We won't end white supremacy through an intellectual understanding alone; we must put that understanding into action."--Robin DiAngelo, author of New York Times bestseller White Fragility
Men Explain Things to Me
"This slim book--seven essays, punctuated by enigmatic, haunting paintings by Ana Teresa Fernandez--hums with power and wit."--Boston Globe
"The antidote to mansplaining."--The Stranger
"Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions."--Salon
"Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society."--San Francisco Chronicle Top Shelf
"Solnit [is] the perfect writer to tackle the subject: her prose style is so clear and cool."--The New Republic
"The terrain has always felt familiar, but Men Explain Things To Me is a tool that we all need in order to find something that was almost lost."--National Post
In her comic, scathing essay, "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters.
This updated edition with two new essays of this national bestseller book features that now-classic essay as well as "#YesAllWomen," an essay written in response to 2014 Isla Vista killings and the grassroots movement that arose with it to end violence against women and misogyny, and the essay "Cassandra Syndrome." This book is also available in hardcover.
Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of eighteen or so books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including the books Men Explain Things to Me and Hope in the Dark, both also with Haymarket; a trilogy of atlases of American cities; The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; and River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at Harper's and a regular contributor to the Guardian.