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Birding to Change the World

Trish O'Kane

In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment.

Trish O'Kane is an accidental ornithologist. In her nearly two decades writing about justice as an investigative journalist, she'd never paid attention to nature. But then Hurricane Katrina destroyed her New Orleans home, sending her into an emotional tailspin.

Enter a scrappy cast of feathered characters--first a cardinal, urban parrots, and sparrows, then a catbird, owls, a bittern, and a woodcock--that cheered her up and showed her a new path. Inspired, O'Kane moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to pursue an environmental studies PhD. There she became a full-on bird obsessive--logging hours in a stunningly biodiverse urban park, filling field notebooks with bird doings and dramas, and teaching ornithology to college students and middle-school kids.

When Warner Park--her daily birdwatching haven--was threatened with development, O'Kane and her neighbors mustered a mighty murmuration of nature lovers, young and old, to save the birds' homes. Through their efforts, she learned that once you get outside and look around, you're likely to fall in love with a furred or feathered creature--and find a flock of your own.

In Birding to Change the World, O'Kane details the astonishing science of bird life, from migration and parenting to the territorial defense strategies that influenced her own activism. A warm and compelling weave of science and social engagement, this is the story of an improbably band of bird lovers who saved their park. And it is a blueprint for muscular citizenship, powered by joy.

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What Have We Here?

Billy Dee Williams

Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up feeding Lenya her lines. He studied painting, first at the High School of Music and Art, with fellow student Diahann Carroll, and then at the National Academy of Fine Art, before setting out to pursue acting with Herbert Berghoff, Stella Adler, and Sidney Poitier.

His first film role was in The Last Angry Man, the great Paul Muni’s final film. It was Muni who gave Billy the advice that sent him soaring as an actor, “You can play any character you want to play no matter who you are, no matter the way you look or the color of your skin.” And Williams writes, “I wanted to be anyone I wanted to be.”

He writes of landing the role of a lifetime: co-starring alongside James Caan in Brian’s Song, the made-for-television movie that was watched by an audience of more than fifty million people. Williams says it was “the kind of interracial love story America needed.”

And when, as the first Black character in the Star Wars universe, he became a true pop culture icon, playing Lando Calrissian in George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back (“What I presented on the screen people didn’t expect to see”). It was a role he reprised in the final film of the original trilogy, The Return of the Jedi, and in the recent sequel The Rise of Skywalker.

A legendary actor, in his own words, on all that has sustained and carried him through a lifetime of dreams and adventure.

 

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How to Raise a Healthy Gamer

Alok Kanojia, MD, MPH

How much should I let them play? How do I get them to be interested in anything else?!
 
When it comes to family rules around video games, most parents are at a loss. After all, our technologically invasive world is something previous generations didn’t have to wrestle with, so we have no model for how to guide our families through the rapidly changing landscape, no blueprint for setting healthy gaming boundaries and keeping them in place.
 
A former Harvard Medical School instructor and one of the foremost experts on video game psychology, Dr. Alok Kanojia—known as “Dr. K” to his millions of followers—has firsthand knowledge of this modern issue: He needed professional help to break his own gaming habits in college, an experience that fueled his interest in learning how to help others. Drawing on Dr. K’s professional specialization in working with people of all ages and varying degrees of addiction, and the most recent research from neuroscience and psychology, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer teaches parents a new skill set for negotiating gaming culture and offers solutions rooted in the science of treating addiction
 
Whether your goal is to prepare your child for a healthy relationship to technology or to curb unhealthy amounts of time spent gaming, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer will help you better understand, communicate with, and—ultimately—empower your gaming enthusiast to live their best life.

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Our Ancient Faith

Allen C. Guelzo

Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the crisis.

Allen C. Guelzo, one of America’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president’s firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln’s deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recrimination in the aftermath of war. In bringing his subject to life as a rigorous and visionary thinker, Guelzo assesses Lincoln’s actions on civil liberties and his views on race, and explains why his vision for the role of government would have made him a pivotal president even if there had been no Civil War. Our Ancient Faith gives us a deeper understanding of this endlessly fascinating man and shows how his ideas are still sharp and relevant more than 150 years later.

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The Formula

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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500 Needlepoint Patterns

Anais Herve

Needlepoint is back in the spotlight with a graphic and contemporary new look. In this bumper directory of patterns, all the designs are easy to stitch in yarn on canvas.

The main stitch used for these patterns is the Bargello stitch, a stitch that actually includes several variations such as flame stitch and Florentine stitch. This group of stitches use regular, straight stitches that repeat with a regular offset. Further patterns also use other stitches adapted to the canvas, which will allow you to diversify your techniques and obtain more complex designs.

Throughout the pages, you will discover simple patterns that can be repeated ad infinitum, allowing you to cover any size canvas. Follow the colours given or change to your own palettes for even greater pattern variations. Frame your creations or transform them into cushions, bags, cases and more - the hardest part is choosing which of the 500 patterns to start with!

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American Flannel

Steven Kurutz

For decades, clothing manufacture was a pillar of U.S. industry. But beginning in the 1980s, Americans went from wearing 70 percent domestic-made apparel to almost none. Even the very symbol of American freedom and style—blue jeans—got outsourced. With offshoring, the nation lost not only millions of jobs but also crucial expertise and artistry.
 
Dismayed by shoddy imported “fast fashion”—and unable to stop dreaming of re-creating a favorite shirt from his youth—Bayard Winthrop set out to build a new company, American Giant, that would swim against this trend. New York Times reporter Steven Kurutz, in turn, began to follow Winthrop’s journey. He discovered other trailblazers as well, from the “Sock Queen of Alabama” to a pair of father-son shoemakers and a men’s style blogger who almost single-handedly drove a campaign to make “Made in the USA” cool. Eye-opening and inspiring, American Flannel is the story of how a band of visionaries and makers are building a new supply chain on the skeleton of the old and wedding old-fashioned craftsmanship to cutting-edge technology and design to revive an essential American dream.

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How to Be Old

Lyn Slater

A personal memoir in which Lyn Slater, known on Instagram as “Accidental Icon,” brings her characteristic style, optimism, forward-thinking, and rules-are-meant-to-be-broken attitude to the question of how to live boldly at any age.
When Lyn Slater started her fashion blog, Accidental Icon, at age sixty-one, she discovered that followers were flocking to her account for more than just her A-list style. As Lyn flaunted gray hair, wrinkles, and a megadose of self-acceptance, they found in her an alternative model of older life: someone who defied the stereotypes, refused to become invisible, and showed that all women have the opportunity to be relevant and take major risks at any stage of their life. Youth is not the only time we can be experimental.

How to Be Old tells the ten-year story of Lyn’s sixties, the sometimes-glamorous, sometimes-turbulent decade of Accidental Icon. This memoir is about the hopeful and future-oriented process of reinvention. It shows readers that while you can’t control everything, what you can control is the way you think about your age and the creative ways you respond to the changes in your mind and body as they happen. Rather than trying to meet standards of youth and beauty as a measure of successful aging, Lyn promotes a more inclusive and empowering standard to judge our older selves by.

In this paradigm-shifting memoir, Lyn exemplifies that even with its unique challenges, being old is just like any new beginning in your life and can be the best and most invigorating of all of life’s phases, full of rebellion and reinvention, connection and creativity.

 

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3 Shades of Blue

James Kaplan

The myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation, straightness—The Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one name—Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane, and, above all, Miles. Nineteen fifty-nine saw Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and more come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the bestselling: Kind of Blue.

3 Shades of Blue is James Kaplan’s magnificent account of the paths of the three giants to the mountaintop of 1959 and beyond. It’s a book about music, and business, and race, and heroin, and the towns that gave jazz its home, from New Orleans and New York to Kansas City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and LA. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange hothouses that can produce its full flowering. It’s a book about the great forebears of this golden age, particularly Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and the disrupters, like Ornette Coleman, who would take the music down truly new paths. And it’s about why the world of jazz most people know is a museum to this never-replicated period.

But above all, 3 Shades of Blue is a book about three very different men—their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness. Bill Evans had a gruesome downward spiral; John Coltrane took the mystic’s path into a space far away from mainstream concerns. Miles had three or four sea changes in him before the end. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan’s hands, an American odyssey with no direction home. It is also a masterpiece, a book about jazz that is as big as America.

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Anything's Pastable

Dan Pashman

The innovative James Beard Award-winning podcaster who changed the way you think about pasta shapes with his invention of the viral sensation cascatelli now does the same for pasta sauces in this fun and charmingly obsessive cookbook, which includes a foreword from bestselling author J. Kenji López-Alt.

Dan set out to revolutionize people's conceptions of pasta sauces, just as he did with pasta shapes. He traveled across Italy and worked with an all-star team of recipe developers in the US to create a new kind of pasta sauce cookbook for people bored with the old standbys. That's why there's no 3-hour marinara recipe or fresh pasta made from scratch in this book. No photos of nonnas caked in flour or the hills of Tuscany. Instead it's time to show the world--Anything's Pastable.

With an incredible array of recipes, Dan showcases the limitless pastabilities when you really know how to use your noodle.

 

 

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Vibrant Watercolor

Geethu Chandramohan

Learn to paint colorful, uplifting watercolor scenes with the step-by-step projects and techniques in this beginner-friendly guide.

Welcome to the wonderful world of watercolor! Paint with Me: Vibrant Watercolor introduces beginning artists to the vibrant artwork of Geethu Chandramohan.

The projects are presented step by step, with Geethu’s beautiful, bright artwork and photography accompanying each step.


Complex-sounding subjects are presented simply and encouragingly in a book that’s perfect for beginners as well as more experienced watercolorists looking for a contemporary, vibrant style of artwork.

Paint with Me: Vibrant Watercolor introduces you to the colorful world of watercolor in a fun, easy way.

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Language City

Ross Perlin

Half of all 7,000-plus human languages may disappear over the next century and--because many have never been recorded--when they're gone, it will be forever. Ross Perlin, a linguist and co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history: contemporary New York. In Language City, Perlin recounts the unique history of immigration that shaped the city, and follows six remarkable yet ordinary speakers of endangered languages deep into their communities to learn how they are maintaining and reviving their languages against overwhelming odds. Perlin also dives deep into their languages, taking us on a fascinating tour of unusual grammars, rare sounds, and powerful cultural histories from all around the world.

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The Backyard Beekeeper, 5th Edition

Kim Flottum

Enjoy the time-honored tradition of beekeeping in your own backyard or urban rooftop with this accessible resource for beekeepers of all skill levels, now in its 5th edition.

With this complete reference and the expert advice of Bee Culture editor emeritus Kim Flottum, your bees will be healthy, happy, and more productive.

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Slow Productivity

Cal Newport

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers – from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe – Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for cultivating a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.

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Wear It Well

Allison Bornstein

Define your style and use fashion as a tool for self-discovery using the Three-Word Method and AB Closet-Editing System.

Personal stylist Allison Bornstein has mastered the art of helping people look good and feel good. In Wear It Well, she shares her philosophy and outlines systems that will bring your style into alignment and create a wardrobe that delights your spirit and reflects your most authentic self.

Use the viral Three-Word Method to discover and define your personal style. Curate your closet with the AB Closet-Editing System, eliminating items that don't fit or work for your lifestyle to build a safe and inspiring space that is filled with only clothes that bring you joy, confidence, and empowerment. Create new, sustainable looks by shopping your closet and mixing and matching with the Nine Universal Pieces.

Filled with client stories, gentle guidance, and expressive photography, Wear It Well will inspire you to identify, articulate, and develop your personal style, and dress with ease.

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Falling Into Place

Thomas Swick

Working as a feature writer in 1976, Thomas Swick falls in love with a visiting Polish student named Hania and soon moves with her to Warsaw. The next decade sees Thomas living in Poland, Greece, and Philadelphia. He declines an invitation to be a Polish informer, sees John Paul II embolden the masses on his first trip back to his homeland since becoming pope, witnesses the rise of Solidarity and the imposition of martial law in Poland, and walks with thousands of Poles on the pilgrimage to Częstochowa, an annual religious rite that blossoms into a nine-day protest march. In 1989, he watches Hania vote in her country's first free elections since pre-war independence. One month later, he lands his dream job as a travel writer.

Falling into Place is the personal story of a young man's discovery of the world and his development as a travel writer. It is also a love story, as he and Hania overcome cultural differences, communist bureaucracy, and unhealthy separations. Intertwined with both is the story of the revolution that altered history. With the world's attention once again turned to Eastern Europe, and a Cold War reality, this memoir can help Americans better understand both.

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Scandinavian from Scratch

Nichole Accettola

From chef Nichole Accettola, Scandinavian from Scratch brings to the page an assortment of baked goods and simple morning and midday meals rooted in Scandinavian cuisine. After moving back to the United States following more than a decade abroad, Accettola found herself longing for the wholesome breads, buttery pastries, decadent cakes, and cookies that she enjoyed on a daily basis while living in Copenhagen. She set out on a mission to bring the tastes and treats of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark to San Francisco and opened her now beloved bakery café, Kantine. 

In Scandinavian from Scratch, Accettola has curated 75 delicious bakes, organized by occasion and arranged from simplest to most complex, drawing from her collection of each Scandinavian country’s baking traditions. Fill your home kitchen with the enticing aromas of Coconut Dream Cake, Black Currant Caves, Cardamom Morning Buns, Saffron Rusks, Gravlax and Chive Potato Salad Smørrebrød, and so much more. The easy-to-follow recipes will expand your baking horizons and bring something special to the table, from breakfast and brunch to afternoon tea to holiday celebrations.

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Make Felt Flowers

Bryanne Rajamannar

Felt flowers bloom all year long

Make beautiful felt flower decorations, bouquets, and accessories that perfectly match any space, mood, or season! Back by popular demand, Bryanne Rajamannar gives you a whole new variety of flowers and plants in this follow-up to Felt Flower Workshop. This beginner-friendly book has simple lessons for creating felt flowers, plants, and projects for all seasons of the year--including wreaths, centerpieces, garlands, and headbands. First, learn to craft each individual flower and leaf by following instructions for cutting the felt from simple patterns, assembling the pieces, and polishing them into lifelike blooms. Then, combine them into endlessly unique arrangements! Immerse yourself in a craft that is easy, inexpensive, and stunning.

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Complete Guide to Natural Home Remedies

Melissa Corkhill

Complete Guide to Natural Home Remedies is a comprehensive guide including 100+ recipes and nearly 70 applications to understanding how to use herbs and oils to help the mind, body and soul. Herbal remedies include everything from teas to ointments to tonics and tinctures. They help with ailments such as bug bites and stings, food poisoning, insomnia, shingles, sore throat, acne, arthritis and so much more! Easy to follow chapters are divided by the body's primary systems including digestive, nervous, respiratory, urinary, and skin as well as sections on the remedies to help the heart and mind. With the recipes and their uses in the forefront, this book is the go-to guide for home remedies.

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And Then We Rise

Common

From the multi-award-winning performer, author, and activist, a comprehensive program for addressing mental and physical health--and encouraging communities to do the same.

Common has achieved success in many facets of his life and career, from music to acting to writing. But for a long time, he didn't feel that he had found fulfillment in his body and spirit.

And Then We Rise is about Common's journey to wellness as a vital element of his success. A testimony to the benefits of self-care, this book is composed of four different sections, each with its own important lessons: "The Food" focuses on nutrition. "The Body" focuses on fitness. "The Mind" focuses on mental health. And "The Soul" focuses on perhaps the most profound thing of all--spiritual well-being.

Common's personal stories act as the backbone of his book, but he also wants to give his readers the gift of professional expertise. Here, he acts as the liaison to his own nutritionist and chef, his own physical trainer, and his own therapist, as well as to those who act as his spiritual influences.

Wise, accessible, and powerful, And Then We Rise offers a comprehensive, holistic approach to wellness that will allow readers to transform their thinking, their actions, and, ultimately, their lives.

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Brought Forth on This Continent

Harold Holzer

From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln’s grappling with the politics of immigration against the backdrop of the Civil War.

In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry.

Abraham Lincoln’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.

Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, “The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln’s leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the ‘nation might live.’” An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln's life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.

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This Is the Honey

Kwame Alexander

In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Nikki Giovanni, This Is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy, "each incantation," as Mahogany L. Browne puts it in her titular poem, is "a jubilee of a people dreaming wildly."

This essential collection, in the tradition of Dudley Randall's The Black Poets and E. Ethelbert Miller's In Search of Color Everywhere, contains poems exploring joy, love, origin, race, resistance, and praise. Jacqueline A.Trimble likens "Black woman joy" to indigo, tassels, foxes, and peacock plumes. Tyree Daye, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of "home" through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. Clint Smith and Cameron Awkward-Rich enfold us in their intimate musings on love and devotion. From a "jewel in the hand" (Patricia Spears Jones) to "butter melting in small pools" (Elizabeth Alexander), This Is the Honey drips with poignant and delightful imagery, music, and raised fists.

Fresh, memorable, and deeply moving, this definitive collection a must-have for any lover of language and a gift for our time.

 

 

 

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Nuts and Bolts

Roma Agrawal

Some of humanity's mightiest engineering achievements are small in scale--and, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, structural engineer Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the magnet, the lens, the string, and the pump.

Tracing the evolution from Egyptian nails to modern skyscrapers, and Neanderthal string to musical instruments, Agrawal shows us how even our most sophisticated items are built on the foundations of these ancient and fundamental breakthroughs. She explores an array of intricate technologies--dishwashers, spacesuits, microscopes, suspension bridges, breast pumps--making surprising connections, explaining how they work, and using her own hand-drawn illustrations to bring complex principles to life.

Alongside deeply personal experiences, she recounts the stories of remarkable--and often uncredited--scientists, engineers, and innovators from all over the world, and explores the indelible impact these creators and their creations had on society. In preindustrial Britain, nails were so precious that their export to the colonies was banned--and women were among the most industrious nail makers. The washing machine displayed at an industrial fair in Chicago in 1898 was the only machine featured that was designed by a woman. The history of the wheel, meanwhile, starts with pottery, and takes us to India's independence movement, where making clothes using a spinning wheel was an act of civil disobedience.

Eye-opening and engaging, Nuts and Bolts reveals the hidden building blocks of our modern world, and shows how engineering has fundamentally changed the way we live.

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Bitter Crop

Paul Alexander

In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades, Paul Alexander—author of heralded lives of Sylvia Plath and J. D. Salinger—gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America’s most eminent jazz singer. He shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life—with relevant flashbacks to provide context—to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined, in the wake of her drug abuse, relationships with violent men, and run-ins with the law.

During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop—a reference to the last two words of Strange Fruit, her moving song about lynching—limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.

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Job Interviewing For Dummies

Pamela Skillings

Boost your confidence, ace your interview, and get the job

Job Interviewing For Dummies will teach you how to prepare for your next job interview, deal with tough questions, and gain the tools and skills to interview with confidence and poise. This book offers a structured, step-by-step approach for succeeding in virtual and in-person interviews. You’ll find information, strategies, and examples to empower you to present your best self to potential employers. Learn how to anticipate and prepare for the most likely questions, regardless of your level or industry, and be prepared for anything—an interview on short notice, explaining gaps on your resume, changing careers, and beyond. With examples and stories from the interview trenches, this friendly Dummies guide will help you breathe new life into your job search.

This book is for anyone interested in finding a new job or helping others in their job search. With Job Interviewing For Dummies, be prepared to hear “yes” more often!

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National Geographic Bucket List Family Travel

Jessica Gee

In this indispensable guide by the mega-popular Bucket List Family, discover expert tips for traveling with kids and 50 not-to-be-missed destination itineraries.

As a family of five, the Bucket List Family has swum with whales in Tonga, slept in castles in Ireland, lived on a houseboat in Amsterdam, eaten breakfast with giraffes in Kenya, spent Halloween in Disneyland, and visited more than 90 countries around the world. Now, Jessica Gee brings her tips and tricks to you in the ultimate expert's guide to traveling as a family.

This beautifully illustrated guide provides all the know-how to fulfill your own family's bucket list--including how-tos for picking a destination, packing, budgeting, and even surviving a 12-hour plane ride. Along with personal family anecdotes, Jess offers 50 itineraries for family-friendly destinations and inspiring top-10 lists with destinations for every age.

This insider's guide from one of the world's most traveled families will inspire you to create new and lasting memories with your family for years to come.

 

 

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Big Meg

Tim Flannery

Internationally bestselling author and renowned scientist Tim Flannery and his daughter, scientist Emma Flannery, delivers an informative-yet-intimate portrait of the megalodon, an extinct shark and the largest predator of all time

When Tim Flannery was a boy he found a fossilized tooth of the giant shark megalodon at a beach near his home in Australia. This remarkable find--the tooth was large enough to cover his palm--sparked an interest in paleontology that was to inform his life's work and a lifelong quest to uncover the secrets of the great shark Otodus megalodon.

 

Tim passed on his love of the natural world and interest in the fossil record to his daughter, Emma, a scientist and writer. And now, together, they have written a fascinating account of this ancient marine creature.

 

Big Meg charts the evolution of megalodon, its super-predator status for about fifteen million years and its decline and extinction. It delves into the fossil record to answer questions about its behavior and role in shaping marine ecosystems as well as its impact on the human psyche. It contains stories of the scientist and amateur fossil hunters who have scoured the seas, and land, for fossil remains, drawn to the beauty and mystique of the great shark, sometimes meeting their death in the process.

 

Deemed "in the league of the all-time great explorers" by David Attenborough, Tim Flannery has come together with Emma Flannery to spin a story of the great natural history of our planet as enthralling as the fossil record itself.

 

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Coming Out as Dalit

Yashica Dutt

Born into a "formerly untouchable manual-scavenging family in small-town India," Yashica Dutt was taught from a young age to not appear “Dalit looking.” Although prejudice against Dalits, who compose 25% of the population, has been illegal since 1950, caste-ism in India is alive and well. Blending her personal history with extensive research and reporting, Dutt provides an incriminating analysis of caste’s influence in India over everything from entertainment to judicial systems and how this discrimination has carried over to US institutions.

Dutt traces how colonial British forces exploited and perpetuated a centuries old caste system, how Gandhi could have been more forceful in combatting prejudice, and the role played by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, whom Isabel Wilkerson called “the MLK of India’s caste issues” in her book Caste. Alongside her analysis, Dutt interweaves personal stories of learning to speak without a regional accent growing up and desperately using medicinal packs to try to lighten her skin.

Published in India in 2019 to acclaim, this expanded edition includes two new chapters covering how the caste system traveled to the US, its history here, and the continuation of bias by South Asian communities in professional sectors. Amid growing conversations about caste discrimination prompting US institutions including Harvard University, Brandeis University, the University of California system, and the NAACP to add caste as a protected category to their policies, Dutt’s work sheds essential light on the significant influence caste-ism has across many aspects of US society.

Raw and affecting, Coming Out as Dalit brings a new audience of readers into a crucial conversation about embracing Dalit identity, offering a way to change the way people think about caste in their own communities and beyond.

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Cool Food

Robert Downey

In Cool Food, celebrated actor and philanthropist Robert Downey Jr. and New York Times bestselling author Thomas Kostigen team up to discover how we can erase our carbon footprints--one bite at a time.

What we eat matters--to us, and to the planet. Cool food is a game-changing new food category and way of thinking that can help fix the climate. This engaging and persuasive book will show you how to make simple choices, starting today--in the supermarket, in your kitchen, and in the world--to reduce your environmental impact. Hundreds of cool foods exist, but until now have gone largely uncelebrated for their climate-positive powers. Some of these foods may already be on your shelf, and some are just on the horizon. But cool food is much more than just a shopping list: it's a way of life vitally important to our future.

Packed with eye-opening information, actionable items, and two dozen delicious recipes, Cool Food comes alive with engaging storytelling and refreshing humor. Robert and Tom have talked with experts around the globe--from farmers who are pioneering new pathways to more sustainable food, to cutting-edge, climate-friendly chefs.

What we choose to eat, where we shop, and how we plan our meals are daily choices that can have a wide impact on the world, whether we realize it or not. We have the power with each one of our daily purchases and our individual food habits to encourage a healthier and more sustainable food system for everyone.

Join Robert and Tom on this fun, exciting, and enlightening adventure and learn how to become part of the Cool Food revolution.

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My Side of the River

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family.

When her parents’ visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a “statistic,” she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws.

For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It’s also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of her brother’s dreams easier than it was for her.

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Make Your Own Mosaics

Helen Miles

Explore the powerful medium of mosaic in this book which offers a fresh perspective on the ancient art. Packed with photographs, clear instructions, and new ideas about how to create stunning mosaic pieces for indoors and outdoors, Make Your Own Mosaics explains the principles of mosaic making as practiced since Roman times.

This easy-to-follow book contains step by step instructions on how to make mosaics, covering every aspect of the process from designing mosaics to tools, adhesives, and substrates. Written for creators with all levels of experience, this book opens up a fascinating world showing how ceramic and glass alongside recycled and reclaimed materials can be used to make lasting pieces for the home and garden.

Make Your Own Mosaics offers eight unique mosaic projects and seven different approaches to this addictive skill. Chapters on Learning from the Ancients are included alongside practical tips and information on how to choose the right mosaic method for your project. From making a mosaic house number to a garden wall plaque or seasonal decorations, this book will show you how. Whether you want to make classically inspired mosaics, experiment with found materials or decorate your space with beautiful and expressive art, Make Your Own Mosaics is for you.

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Essays that Kicked Apps: 55+ Unforgettable College Application Essays that Got Students Accepted

The Princeton Review

Each year, colleges are inundated with earnest, eager applications. Your own essay may need to shine from among as many as 60,000 others to get noticed!

All the essays collected in this book are real examples of successful, stand-out writing, and each is annotated with explanations from The Princeton Review’s admissions experts about its most memorable or effective techniques. Get reading—and then writing—and let these model essays give you the kick-app advantage!

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Food Network Magazine The Big Book of Pizza

Food Network Magazine

Make 75 amazing pizzas at home with foolproof dough recipes, super-fun topping combos, and tips and tricks and shortcuts from the pros in the Food Network Kitchen.

Pizza night just got even more exciting! This cookbook from the editors of Food Network Magazine is packed with recipes for every kind of pizza lover including different styles of pies and tons of new topping combos.

You don’t need to be a pro pizza-maker to get on board: There are options for cooks at every level, whether you're just starting out or you have your own pizza oven. Plus, all the recipes have been triple tested, so you know they’ll turn out just right.

 

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When the Game Was War

Rich Cohen

Four historic teams. Four legendary players. One unforgettable season.

The 1980s were a transformative decade for the NBA. Since its founding in 1946, the league had evolved from a bruising, earthbound game of mostly nameless, underpaid players to one in which athletes became household names for their thrilling, physics-defying play. The 1987–88 season was the peak of that golden era, a year of incredible drama that featured a pantheon of superstars in their prime—the most future Hall of Famers competing at one time in any given season—battling for the title, and for their respective legacies.

In When the Game Was War, bestselling author Rich Cohen tells the story of this incredible season through the four teams, and the four players, who dominated it: Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics, Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers, Isiah Thomas and the Detroit Pistons, and a young Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls. From rural Indiana to the South Side of Chicago, suburban North Carolina to rust-belt Michigan, Cohen explores the diverse journeys each of these iconic players took before arriving on the big stage. Drawing from dozens of interviews with NBA insiders, Cohen brings to vivid life some of the most colorful characters of the era—like Bill Laimbeer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Danny Ainge, and Charles Oakley—who fought like hell to help these stars succeed. 

For anyone who longs to understand how the NBA came to be the cultural juggernaut it is today—and to relive the magic and turmoil of those pivotal years—When the Game Was War brilliantly recasts one unforgettable season and the four transcendent players who were at the center of it all.

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Beyond the Wall

Katja Hoyer

In 1990, a country disappeared. When the Iron Curtain fell, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the fault lines of ideology and geopolitics.

In Beyond the Wall, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer sets aside the usual Cold War caricatures of the GDR to offer a kaleidoscopic new vision of this vanished country, revealing the rich political, social, and cultural landscape that existed amid oppression and hardship. Drawing on a vast array of never-before-seen interviews and documents, this is the definitive history of the other Germany, beyond the Wall.

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Holding the Note

David Remnick

The greatest popular songs, whether it’s Aretha Franklin singing “Respect” or Bob Dylan performing “Blind Willie McTell,” have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.

He portrays a series of musical lives and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. From Cohen’s performing debut, when his stage fright was so debilitating he couldn’t get through “Suzanne,” to Franklin’s iconic mink-drop at the Kennedy Center, Holding the Note delivers a view of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime’s passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.

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To Infinity and Beyond

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Linked to a special mini season of the award-winning StarTalk podcast, this enlightening illustrated narrative by the world's most celebrated astrophysicist explains the universe from the solar system to the farthest reaches of space with authority and humor.

No one can make the mysteries of the universe more comprehensible and fun than Neil deGrasse Tyson. Drawing on mythology, history, and literature--alongside his trademark wit and charm--Tyson and StarTalk senior producer Lindsey Nyx Walker bring planetary science down to Earth and principles of astrophysics within reach. In this entertaining book, illustrated with vivid photographs and art, readers travel with him through space and time, starting with the Big Bang and voyaging to the far reaches of the universe and beyond. Along the way, science greets pop culture as Tyson explains the triumphs--and bloopers--in Hollywood's blockbusters: all part of an entertaining ride through the cosmos.

The book begins as we leave Earth, encountering new truths about our planet's atmosphere, the nature of sunlight, and the many missions that have demystified our galactic neighbors. But the farther out we travel, the weirder things get. What's a void and what's a vacuum? How can light be a wave and a particle at the same time? When we finally arrive in the blackness of outer space, Tyson takes on the spookiest phenomena of the cosmos: parallel worlds, black holes, time travel, and more.

For science junkies and fans of the conundrums that astrophysicists often ponder, To Infinity and Beyond is an enlightening adventure into the farthest reaches of the cosmos.

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A Myriad of Tongues

Caleb Everett

A sweeping exploration of the relationship between the language we speak and our perception of such fundamentals of experience as time, space, color, and smells.

We tend to assume that all languages categorize ideas and objects similarly, reflecting our common human experience. But this isn’t the case. When we look closely, we find that many basic concepts are not universal, and that speakers of different languages literally see and think about the world differently.

Caleb Everett takes readers around the globe, explaining what linguistic diversity tells us about human culture, overturning conventional wisdom along the way. For instance, though it may seem that everybody refers to time in spatial terms—in English, for example, we speak of time “passing us by”—speakers of the Amazonian language Tupi Kawahib never do. In fact, Tupi Kawahib has no word for “time” at all. And while it has long been understood that languages categorize colors based on those that speakers regularly encounter, evidence suggests that the color words we have at our disposal affect how we discriminate colors themselves: a rose may not appear as rosy by any other name. What’s more, the terms available to us even determine the range of smells we can identify. European languages tend to have just a few abstract odor words, like “floral” or “stinky,” whereas Indigenous languages often have well over a dozen.

Why do some cultures talk anthropocentrically about things being to one’s “left” or “right,” while others use geocentric words like “east” and “west”? What is the connection between what we eat and the sounds we make? A Myriad of Tongues answers these and other questions, yielding profound insights into the fundamentals of human communication and experience.

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Small Towns in Wisconsin

Mary Bergin

You know the adage-good things come in small packages. Here's proof: dozens of delicious little destinations that delight travelers who crave fun, safe, surprising, and under-the-radar escapes from big-city bustle and congestion. Time to downshift and discover the natural beauty, unique spirit, and enduring character of unusual burgs of Wisconsin. All of these special places have a population of no more than five thousand people. Midwest U.S. travel, regional foods, and German heritage are Mary Bergin's writing specialties. The author of Wisconsin Supper Club Cookbook boasts decades of newspaper work as an editor and reporter. She has earned four Lowell Thomas Awards for her efforts in travel journalism.

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Paper Valley

P. David Allen

When government scientist David Allen arrived at his new jobsite in the 1990s, the Fox River near Wisconsin's Green Bay was dominated by hulking paper mills, noxious industrial odors, and widespread ecological damage. Confronted by his lack of resources to force the politically powerful "Paper Valley" polluters to fix their mess, Allen proceeds against all bureaucratic odds in building a $1 billion case against the paper company bosses. Two small but vital players, Allen along with journalist Susan Campbell were relentless in bringing the case to the public at the time. They do so again in this book: an act of radical transparency to uncover the intrigue that nearly blocked the cleanup behind the scenes at US Fish and Wildlife, Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources, and the US Environmental Protection Agency. In a rare and major environmental win, the Fox River became the site of the largest polychlorinated biphenyls cleanup in history, paid for by the paper companies rather than taxpayers, to the tune of $1.3 billion, and completed in 2020.

This true story of struggle, perseverance, and success inspires hope for environmentalists who strive to restore natural landscapes. The detailed account given in this book is meant to inspire and offer practical knowledge and solutions for those fighting similar opponents of environmental cleanup and restoration. Allen and Campbell eloquently outline the problematic bureaucracy involved in environmental cleanup efforts and reveal tactics to compel corporate entities who would dodge accountability for decades worth of contamination.

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The Einstein Effect

Benyamin Cohen

A fascinating look into how Einstein's genius and science continues to show up in so many facets of our everyday lives and his enduring legacy as an unlikely pop culture icon.

Albert Einstein was the first modern-day celebrity and, decades after his death, still has the world's most recognizable face. His influence is seen in much of the technology we use every day: GPS, remote controls, weather forecasts, even toothpaste. But it's not just Einstein's scientific discoveries that continue to shape our world. His legacy underpins the search for aliens, the rescue of refugees, the invention of time machines, and the debunking of fake news. He appears in new books, TV shows, and movies all the time--and fans are paying millions for Einstein relics at auction.

Award-winning author and journalist Benyamin Cohen has a bizarre side hustle as the manager of Einstein's official social media accounts, which have 20 million followers--more than most living celebrities. In The Einstein Effect, Cohen embarks on a global quest to unearth Einstein's ongoing relevance today. Along the way, he meets scientists and celebrities, speaks to dozens with the last name Einstein (including two rabbis), and even tracks down the brain of Einstein, stolen from his body during the autopsy. Cohen shows us the myriad ways the Nobel Prize winner's influence is still with us, giving an in-depth--and often hilarious--look at the world's favorite genius like you've never seen him before.

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Solve Your Money Troubles

Amy Loftsgordon

Struggling with debt? Find solutions here.

Conquering overwhelming debt starts with understanding your options. Solve Your Money Troubles gives you the tools you need to get your finances back on track.

In addition to up-to-date legal information, you’ll find practical tools, such as sample creditor letters and budgeting worksheets. 

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National Dish

Anya von Bremzen

In this engrossing and timely journey to the crossroads of food and identity award-winning writer Anya von Bremzen explores six of the world’s most fascinating and iconic culinary cultures—France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey—brilliantly weaving cuisine, history, and politics into a work of scintillating connoisseurship and charm

We all have an idea in our heads about what French food is—or Italian, or Japanese, or Mexican, or . . . But where did those ideas come from? Who decides what makes a national food canon? Recipient of three James Beard awards, Anya von Bremzen has written definitive cookbooks on Russian, Spanish, and Latin American cuisines, as well as her internationally acclaimed memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. Now in National Dish, she sets out to investigate the truth behind the eternal cliché—“we are what we eat”—traveling to six storied food capitals, going high and low, from world-famous chefs to scholars to strangers in bars, in search of how cuisine became connected to place and identity.

Paris is where the whole idea of food as national heritage was first invented, and so it is where Anya must begin. With an inquisitive eye and unmistakable wit, she ponders the codification of French food and the current tension between locavorism and globalization. From France, she’s off to Naples, to probe the myth and reality of pizza, pasta, and Italian-ness. Next up, Tokyo, where Anya and her partner Barry explore ramen, rice, and the distance between Japan’s future and its past. From there they move to Seville, to search for the community-based essence of Spain’s tapas traditions, and then Oaxaca, where debates over postcolonial cultural integration find expression in maize and mole. In Istanbul, a traditional Ottoman potluck becomes a lens on how a former multicultural empire defines its food heritage. Finally, they land back in their beloved home in Queens, for a dinner centered on Ukrainian borsch, a meal that has never felt more loaded, or more precious and poignant.

A unique and magical cook’s tour of the world, National Dish brings us to a deep appreciation of how the country makes the food, and the food the country.

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Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine New Edition

Andrew Chevallier

Discover how to make and use natural remedies from home-grown herbs to improve your health and wellbeing.

In recent years, more people than ever have turned to natural remedies for general health and wellbeing, and for help with ailments, from the common cold to arthritis. This comprehensive book of expert advice teaches you how to grow your own herbs, harvest plants from the wild, and process ingredients to create your own cabinet of natural remedies, all with safety in mind.

In this updated, expanded, and fully redesigned edition of his bestselling classic, author Andrew Chevallier - a fellow and former president of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists - combines the latest scientific research with the traditional and folkloric use of the plants to give detailed information about the benefits and constituents of more than 560 herbs, from aloe vera and cardamom through to witch hazel and yarrow.

Clear imagery will help you identify and distinguish between the different healing plants, while a detailed self-help section shows you how to treat more than 150 common ailments, including with practical herbal remedies you can make at home: learn how to create delicate tea infusions, strong tinctures, sweet syrups, infused oils, powdered poultices, and more.

Whether you're a natural health newbie or an experienced herbalist, the Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine is the unrivalled guide to natural healing, with practical recipes and advice you can trust.

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Althea

Sally H. Jacobs

In 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson first walked onto the diamond at Ebbets Field, the all-white, upper-crust US Lawn Tennis Association opened its door just a crack to receive a powerhouse player who would integrate "the game of royalty." The player was a street-savvy young Black woman from Harlem named Althea Gibson who was about as out-of-place in that rarefied and intolerant world as any aspiring tennis champion could be. Her tattered jeans and short-cropped hair drew stares from everyone who watched her play, but her astonishing performance on the court soon eclipsed the negative feelings being cast her way as she eventually became one of the greatest American tennis champions.

Gibson had a stunning career. Raised in New York and trained by a pair of tennis-playing doctors in the South, Gibson’s immense talent on the court opened the door for her to compete around the world. She won top prizes at Wimbledon and Forest Hills time and time again. The young woman underestimated by so many wound up shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth II, being driven up Broadway in a snowstorm of ticker tape, and ultimately became the first Black woman to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated and the second to appear on the cover of Time. In a crowning achievement, Althea Gibson became the No. One ranked female tennis player in the world for both 1957 and 1958. Seven years later she broke the color barrier again where she became the first Black woman to join the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).

In Althea, prize-winning former Boston Globe reporter Sally H. Jacobs tells the heart-rending story of this pioneer, a remarkable woman who was a trailblazer, a champion, and one of the most remarkable Americans of the twentieth century.

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The Kew Gardener's Guide to Growing Cacti and Succulents

ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS KEW

This inspirational book from Kew Gardens' cacti and succulents expert is the perfect guide to growing and maintaining a wide variety of these fascinating plants.

Indoors or outside, in the smallest spaces or as features in large gardens, succulents and cacti are popular in homes and gardens all across the world, regardless of climate. They’re resilient, beautiful and easy to care for as long as you’re armed with the right knowledge.

Packed with information and inspiration, and with the guiding authority and expertise of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, this book teaches you everything you need to know about 50 speciments of succulents and cacti, from ideal humidity, light and temperature, to maintenance instructions so that your plants can thrive.

This book also contains 12 easy-to-follow projects for you to carry out at home, so you can grow a vibrant array of succulents and cacti for your home, whether you are a complete beginner or a keen enthusiast.

Combining beautiful botanical illustrations and practical advice, The Kew Gardener’s Guide to Growing Cacti and Succulents is the definitive introduction to growing these wonderful plants.

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Satisfying Stitches

Hope Brasfield

Discover the creative satisfaction and stress-relieving benefits of embroidery while stitching fun, modern, vibrant designs such as flowers, plants, animals, landscapes, and celestial scenes.

Beginning a new creative pursuit can be intimidating, but Satisfying Stitches takes all the guesswork and fear out of getting started with techniques designed to boost confidence and provide relaxation. This easy-to-follow, photo-illustrated guide includes a review of the basic and inexpensive supplies needed to get started, foundational techniques, and step-by-step instructions for creating a variety of stitches. As your skills and confidence grow, you will find that stitches that may look advanced are quite simple, and you’ll be able to easily add dimension and texture to your designs.

The exclusive embroidery designs include a wide variety of motifs and patterns, such as houseplants, florals, mushrooms, butterflies, fish, landscapes, and sunsets, in a variety of color palettes. The projects are divided into three levels to match your confidence, skill level, and time.

While most beginner books don’t go beyond a couple of easy stitches, Satisfying Stitches takes the opposite approach, incorporating stitches that pack a big “wow” factor but are quite easy, such as fern stitch, wheatear stitch, thistle flowers, and woven wheel roses. Author Hope Brasfield offers tons of encouragement to beginners and beyond. You’ll learn to embrace imperfection, slow down, and enjoy the process.

You will also discover, as Hope did, that embroidery offers much more than a creative outlet. Focusing on something that requires imagination, handwork, and concentration can help reduce stress and promote relaxation.


So much more than pretty patterns, Satisfying Stitches offers an exciting opportunity to gain new skills, become a more confident creative, ditch the smart phone, and de-stress.

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Mozart in Motion

Patrick Mackie

In exhilarating, transformative prose, the poet Patrick Mackie reveals a musician in dialogue with culture at its most sweepingly progressive.

Mozart is one of the most familiar and beloved icons of our culture, but how much do we really understand of his music, and what can it reveal to us about the great composer?

Following Mozart from his youth in Salzburg to his early death; from his close and rivalrous relationship with his father to his romantic attachments; from his hugely successful operas to intimate compositions on the keyboard, Patrick Mackie leads the reader through the major and lesser-known moments of the composer’s life and brings alive the teeming, swiveling modernity of eighteenth-century Europe. In this era of rococo painting, surrealist aesthetics, and political turbulence, Mozart reckoned with a searing talent that threatened to overwhelm him, all the while pushing himself to extraordinary feats of musicianship.

In Mozart in Motion, we are returned to the volatility of the eighteenth century and hear Mozart’s music in all its audacious vividness, gaining fresh perspectives on why his works still move us so intensely today, as we continue to search for a modernity he imagined into being.

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The Courage of Compassion

Robin Steinberg

How would you like to be judged for the rest of your life by the worst thing you’ve ever done?

We all think we are compassionate just like we all think we are honest. But true compassion is not innate. Compassion for others, especially those that we don’t know or understand, must be learned. Our lack of compassion is perhaps most extreme in the exercise of criminal justice, where a person’s entire life, worth, and character are judged through the myopic lens of a single act. But no one, says Robin Steinberg, should be reduced to their worst moment.

From the founder and CEO of The Bail Project, The Courage of Compassion unveils how we can reimagine justice through compassion. Steinberg shares her journey as a public defender, representing people at precisely that time in their lives — their own worst moment. She recounts the heart-wrenching stories of her clients and invites us to interrogate our fears and beliefs about justice and punishment. Lastly, Steinberg reveals moments when she questioned her own capacity for compassion, as well as her ability to fight for better, more humane justice from within a system that is riddled with holes and seemingly interminable problems.

A gritty tale about confronting injustice and challenging ourselves to rediscover our shared humanity, The Courage of Compassion is an invitation to join Steinberg as she explores what it will take to move beyond our current justice paradigm. The criminal justice system reflects a history and power structure, but it also mirrors how we come into society and show up for one another. As she writes, the quest to improve this system will only truly begin “when we can finally see in the faces of those ensnared and imprisoned in our legal system, ourselves. And when we can see our children, in their children.”

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Handbook of Butterflies and Moths

David Carter

A compact, comprehensive field guide to over 500 butterfly and moth species from around the world.

The clearest and sharpest recognition guide to over 500 butterfly and moth species from around the world.

Authoritative text, crystal-clear photography, and a systematic approach make this the most comprehensive and concise pocket guide to the butterflies and moths of the world. Packed with more than 600 full-colour photographs of over 500 species, this handy reference book is designed to cut through the process of identification and help you to recognize a species quickly and easily.

Expertly written and thoroughly vetted, each entry combines a precise description with annotated photographs to highlight the characteristics and distinguishing features of each butterfly or moth, while also providing at-a-glance facts for quick reference. The introduction explains the difference between butterflies and moths, details the life cycle from egg to adult, rearing your own specimens, and offers guidance for finding and observing live specimens in the wild. A concise glossary defines technical and scientific terms. Compact enough to take out into the field, DK Handbooks: Butterflies & Moths makes identifying these beautiful insects easier than ever before.

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Modern Resin Jewellery

Sara Naumann

Using a small number of tools and materials, learn how to make beautiful, unique resin jewelry that is both stylish and timeless.

Be impressed by the ease and versatility of resin jewelry making. Well-known crafter Sara Naumann provides over 50 projects that are modern and straightforward to replicate.

 

 

 

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Timelines of Science

DK

From the wheel to the worldwide web, our planet has been transformed by science.

Now you can travel through time to experience centuries of invention and innovation on this spectacular visual voyage of discovery.

Starting in ancient times and ending up in the modern world, you’ll explore scientific history showcased in stunning images and captivating text. An easy-to-follow illustrated timeline runs throughout the book, keeping you informed of big breakthroughs and key developments. Get to grips with revolutionary ideas like measuring time or check out amazing artifacts like flying machines. Great geniuses, including Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and Charles Darwin are introduced alongside their most important ideas and inventions, all shown in glorious detail.



Hundreds of pages of history are covered in Timelines of Science, with global coverage of scientific advances. Whether you're joining in with eureka moments, inspecting engines, or learning about evolution, all aspects of science are covered from the past, present, and future.

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Simply Tomato

Martha Holmberg

Americans eat more tomatoes than any vegetable except for the potato. But what do we do with all those tomatoes? Acclaimed chef, cooking teacher, and author Martha Holmberg shares 100 recipes to turn the tomato into glorious dishes. Whether it's a fresh-off-the-vine tomato or a just-picked-from-the-supermarket-shelf tomato, Holmberg has ideas to make the best of our favorite summer fruit. There are three versions of gazpacho, five ways to top roasted tomato puff pastry, plus Tomato and Zucchini Gratin, Classic Panzanella, Tomato Risotto, and Stuffed Tomatoes with Spiced Beef Piccadillo. With more tomato varieties in existence than ever before, Holmberg explains which tomatoes work best with which recipes: choose a beefsteak to roast with fish or pick cherry tomatoes to toss with corn in a quick summer salad. Holmberg also reveals her secret, umami-packed ingredient--tomato water. She calls it a "magical elixir" that can add intense tomato flavor to most anything you make.

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Start Painting Now

Emily Powell

Get in touch with your inner artist and nurture your creative mind with this playful and informative handbook.

Start Painting Now is a practical, accessible guide to discovering your creative spirit, giving you brilliant new tools for relaxation and self-care. Instagram's favourite artist Emily Powell and her sister, doctor Sarah Moore, will guide you through the process of learning to ignore your inner critic and unwind from the stresses of daily life through painting.

Whether you're returning to art after a long break or starting as a complete beginner, this book will inspire you to just pick up a brush and see where it takes you. Backed by the latest research on the benefits of art for mental health and wellbeing, Start Painting Now will empower you to put aside the fear of failure, turn off your phone and throw yourself into the joy of creativity.

Complete with inspiring examples from a range of female artists and set alongside examples of Emily and Sarah’s own work, this book will give you all the tools you need to start painting now.

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The Daily Dad

Ryan Holiday

Becoming a parent is more than just a biological process – it’s a lifelong commitment to sacrifice, service, and most importantly, love. It’s a challenge to get up every day and put your kids first. You will experience moments of heroic compassion and humiliating failure, sometimes within the same day.

But you don’t have to do it alone. From Ryan Holiday, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash hit The Daily Stoic, The Daily Dad provides 366 timeless meditations on parenting in a few manageable paragraphs a day – useful for even the most sleep deprived new parent.

Drawing on his own experience as a father of two as well as lessons from the lives of legends such as Theodore Roosevelt, Bruce Springsteen, Queen Elizabeth II, Marcus Aurelius, and Toni Morrison, this daily devotional provides wisdom and guidance on being the role model your child needs. Whether you’re expecting your first or already a grandparent, The Daily Dad offers encouragement, perspective, and practical advice for every stage of your child’s life.

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For the Love of Mars

Matthew Shindell

A tour of Mars in the human imagination, from ancient astrologers to modern explorers.

Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. Due to its vivid color and visibility, its geologic kinship with Earth, and its potential as our best hope for settlement, Mars embodies everything that inspires us about space and exploration. For the Love of Mars surveys the red planet’s place in the human imagination, beginning with ancient astrologers and skywatchers and ending in our present moment of exploration and virtual engagement.

National Air and Space Museum curator Matthew Shindell describes how historical figures across eras and around the world have made sense of this mysterious planet. We meet Mayan astrologer priests who incorporated Mars into seasonal calendars and religious ceremonies; Babylonian astrologers who discerned bad omens; figures of the Scientific Revolution who struggled to comprehend it as a world; Victorian astronomers who sought signs of intelligent life; and twentieth- and twenty-first-century scientists who have established a technological presence on its surface. Along the way, we encounter writers and artists from each of these periods who take readers and viewers along on imagined journeys to Mars.

By focusing on the diverse human stories behind the telescopes and behind the robots we know and love, Shindell shows how Mars exploration has evolved in ways that have also expanded knowledge about other facets of the universe. Captained by an engaging and erudite expert, For the Love of Mars is a captivating voyage through time and space for anyone curious about Curiosity and the red planet.

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Valiant Women

Lena S. Andrews

A groundbreaking new history of the role of American servicewomen in WWII, illuminating their forgotten yet essential contributions to the Allies' victory.

Now Available in Trade Paperback

Valiant Women is the story of the 350,000 American women who served in uniform during World War II. These incredible women served in every service branch, in every combat theater, and in nearly two-thirds of the available military occupations at the time.

They were pilots, codebreakers, ordnance experts, gunnery instructors, metalsmiths, chemists, translators, parachute riggers, truck drivers, radarmen, pigeon trainers, and much more. They were directly involved in some of the most important moments of the war, from the D-Day landings to the peace negotiations in Paris. These women--who hailed from every race, creed, and walk of life--died for their country and received the nation's highest honors. Their work, both individually and in total, was at the heart of the Allied strategy that won World War II.

Yet, until now, their stories have been relegated to the dusty shelves of military archives or a passing mention in the local paper. Often the women themselves kept their stories private, even from their own families.

Now, military analyst Lena Andrews corrects the record with the definitive and comprehensive historical account of American servicewomen during World War II, based on new archival research, firsthand interviews with surviving veterans, and a deep professional understanding of military history and strategy.

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Culture

Martin Puchner

Why care about the past? What good are the arts? At every stage, humanity has sought to understand and transmit to future generations not just the “know-how” of life, but the “know-why”—the meaning and purpose of our existence, as expressed in art, religion, and philosophy. Crucially, societies have always been most successful in both know-how and know-why by adopting and remixing the insights of the past and of other cultures. In this expansive one-volume tour of world culture through the ages, Martin Puchner argues that the arts and humanities are (and have been) essential to the transmission of knowledge that drives and undergirds the efforts of human civilization.

 

With magnificent global range and narrative flair, Puchner focuses on a series of dramatic turning points to highlight cultural achievements from Nefertiti’s lost city to the plays of Wole Soyinka; from the theaters of ancient Greece to Chinese travel journals to Arab and Aztec libraries; from an Indian statuette found at Pompeii to a time capsule left behind on the Moon. His book astonishes, informs and delights at every turn.

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Bogie and Bacall

William J. Mann

From the noted Hollywood biographer and author of The Contender comes this celebration of the great American love story--the romance between Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart--capturing its complexity, contradictions, and challenges as never before.

 

 

In Bogie & Bacall, William Mann offers a deep and comprehensive look at Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and the unlikely love they shared. Mann details their early years--Bogart's effete upbringing in New York City; Bacall's rise as a model and actress. He paints a vivid portrait of their courtship and twelve-year marriage: the fights, the reconciliations, the children, the affairs, Bogie's illness and Bacall's steadfastness until his death. He offers a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of Bacall's life after Bogie, exploring her relationships with Frank Sinatra and Jason Robards, who would become her second husband, and the identity crisis she faced.

Surpassing previous biographies, Mann digs deep into the celebrities' personal lives and considers their relationship from surprising angles. Bacall was just nineteen when she started dating the thrice-married forty-five-year-old Bogart. How might that age gap have influenced their relationship In addition to what she gained, what might Bacall have lost by marrying a Hollywood superstar more than twice her age How did Bogart, a man of average looks, become one of the greatest movie stars of all time Throughout, Mann explains the unparalleled successes of their individual careers as well as the extraordinary love between them and the legend that has endured.

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Hiking Waterfalls Wisconsin

Chad Turner

Wisconsin truly is a water-saturated nature-lovers paradise: a land of many lakes, rivers and forests. It is known for free-flowing beer and lots of free-flowing water. Most of the year Wisconsin is a wintry playground, but as their impressive quantity of snow melts, the astounding water within its borders turn into rushing rivers and an impressive cache of bubbling cascades. Wisconsin is home to over 100 remarkable waterfalls and 2,700 miles of hiking trails, making it a preferred destination for hikers and waterfall enthusiasts. This guide covers everything readers need to dream, plan, and tackle the best waterfall hikes in Wisconsin. Complemented with color photography, custom maps, trail descriptions, turn-by-turn directions, and information on access and amenities, readers will be inspired to venture near and far to experience every waterfall in the state.

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Seed to Table

Luay Ghafari

A Seasonal Guide for Growing & Cooking Foods Right at Home

Learn to garden in any space with Seed to Table, grow and cook nutrient-dense foods to take your gardening and cooking to the next level!

Gardening, cooking, and eating done right! Seed to Table focuses on how to feed your family with nutritious foods from your own outdoor, home and/or kitchen garden. Whether you live in a city or in the country, this book gives you tools on effective growing techniques, seed starting methods, and garden maintenance.

Organic gardening for every individual style! Have fun while you create your own gardening system whether it be for a container garden or a kitchen garden. Try out big and small garden ideas to stock up your fridge with delicious fruits, vegetables, and herbs to grow your self-sufficiency. Maximize your minimal or large space with impactful practices that are perfect for anyone on a sustainability and self-sufficiency journey.

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Seventy Times Seven

Alex Mar

On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher. The press swoops in.

When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim’s grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life. This tragedy in a midwestern steel town soon reverberates across the United States and around the world—reaching as far away as the Vatican—as newspapers cover the story on their front pages and millions sign petitions in support of Paula.

As Paula waits on death row, her fate sparks a debate that not only animates legal circles but raises vital questions about the value of human life: What are we demanding when we call for justice? Is forgiveness an act of desperation or of profound bravery? As Bill and Paula’s friendship deepens, and as Bill discovers others who have chosen to forgive after terrible violence, their story asks us to consider what radical acts of empathy we might be capable of.

In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar weaves an unforgettable narrative of an act of violence and its aftermath. This is a story about the will to live—to survive, to grow, to change—and about what we are willing to accept as justice. Tirelessly researched and told with intimacy and precision, this book brings a haunting chapter in the history of our criminal justice system to astonishing life.

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70s House

Estelle Bilson

For many people with an interest in 70s décor and design it can be overwhelming to know where to look, what to buy, what colors to use and how to style their home without it looking like a 'junk shop' or a pastiche. That's where 70s House comes in: with advice, tips and tricks to creating a thoroughly 70s space (or even just a few featured items) this vibrant book is crammed full of 70s interiors and bright, retro imagery. Clear and attractive photos illustrate how this can translate to readers' own interior projects. Part living manual, part interiors guide, 70s House will bring not just the colors and kitsch to the modern day, but also the freedom, rebellious spirit, joy and pure fun epitomised by the era - because the 70s is so much more than just the decade that taste forgot.

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Sing, Memory

Makana Eyre

On a cold October night in 1942, SS guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d'Arguto. Many in the group did not live to see morning, and those who survived the guards' reprisal were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau just a few weeks later. Only one of its members survived the Holocaust. Yet their story survives, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz. An amateur musician, he was not Jewish, but struck up an unlikely friendship with d'Arguto in Sachsenhausen. D'Arguto tasked him with a mission: to save the musical heritage of the victims of the Nazi camps.

In Sing, Memory, Makana Eyre recounts Kulisiewicz's extraordinary transformation from a Polish nationalist into a guardian of music and culture from the Nazi camps. Aided by an eidetic memory, Kulisiewicz was able to preserve for posterity not only his own songs about life at the camp, but the music and poetry of prisoners from a range of national and cultural backgrounds. They composed symphonies, organized clandestine choirs, arranged great pieces of music by illustrious composers, and gathered regularly over the course of the war to perform for one another. For many, music enabled them to resist, bear witness, and maintain their humanity in some of the most brutal conditions imaginable.

After the war, Kulisiewicz returned to Poland and assembled an archive of camp music, which he went on to perform in more than a dozen countries. He dedicated the remainder of his life to the memory of the Nazi camps. Drawing on oral history and testimony, as well as extensive archival research, Eyre tells this rich and affecting human story of musical resistance to the Nazi regime in full for the first time.

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Creative Stained Glass

Noor Springael

A beginner friendly guide to making stained glass art using the most popular and accessible method, copper foil.

The traditional art form of stained glass has become extremely popular again and this collection has everything you need to know to get started on this exciting craft. The effect of sunlight streaming through colourful stained glass is visually stunning and this collection brings the craft right up to date with techniques and projects for a new audience.

There are step-step-instructions and photographs for all the main techniques including creating patterns, glass cutting, polishing, using foils and soldering. Artist and stained glass expert, Noor Springael, also explains how to prepare your workspace, how to work with templates, framing and display techniques and important safety information.

Noor shares all her tips and tricks for making beautiful projects including colour palette, using glass overlays and composition. There are 17 projects ranging from wall hangings, sun catchers, decorative windows, glass floral bouquets, jewellery, candle holders, frames and mirrors. Full sized templates are included for all of the projects.

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Lessons Learned and Cherished

Deborah Roberts

A giftable collection of essays from celebrity contributors celebrating the great work of teachers or a teacher they admire, curated by ABC journalist Deborah Roberts. Contributors include Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, Jenna Bush Hager, Robin Roberts, Brooke Shields, Octavia Spencer, Misty Copeland, among others.

Everyone can name a teacher that had an impact on their life. Educators not only open our minds to new ideas, but they also help us recognize our potential and our passions. However, they rarely get credit for the life changing work they do, and they may not have any idea how that work can impact a student all the way into adulthood.

In The Teacher Who Changed My Life, renowned ABC journalist Deborah Roberts curates a collection of essays, letters, and musings from celebrity friends and colleagues alike that share how teachers changed them and helped them get to where they are today.

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You: The Story

Ruta Sepetys

Life is story in motion. Each day, you add to your story, revise it, and view it from a different angle. You erase things. Tear pages out. And sometimes, in hindsight, wish you could put them back. A day is a story. A year is a story. A life is a story.
You are a story.

Ruta Sepetys is known for creating vivid characters and harrowing plots. After five award-winning works of historical fiction and countless hours of meticulous research, she can affirm that the secret to strong writing is embedded within your life experience.

You: The Story is a powerful how-to book for aspiring writers that encourages you to look inward and excavate your own memories in order to discover the authentic voices and compelling details that are waiting to be put on the page. Masterfully weaving in humorous and heartfelt stories from her own life that illustrate an aspect of the craft of writing (such as plot, character development, or dialogue), Sepetys then inspires readers with a series of writing prompts and exercises.

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Choosing to Run

Des Linden

Featuring both the story of an historic, unforgettable win and insight into the life of an indelible champion, Choosing to Run is a truly inspirational memoir from Boston Marathon winner and Olympian Des Linden, sharing her personal story and what motivates her to keep showing up. When Des woke up on April 16, 2018, the morning of the Boston Marathon, it was 39 degrees and raining, with high, gusty winds. The weather didn’t bother her. In fact, she thought it might be a blessing. She was far from peak form—recovering from illness and questioning her running future—and didn’t expect much of herself that day.

But as she ticked off mile after mile in the brutal conditions, passing familiar landmarks on the course she knew by heart, something shifted. Opportunity unexpectedly presented itself. Des tapped into her inner strength and remembered all of the reasons she loved to race.

Coming off Heartbreak Hill at Mile 22, Des took the lead and never relinquished it, becoming the 2018 Boston Marathon champion and the first American woman to win the race in thirty-three years. 

Her career has always been defined by tenacity and an independent spirit, stretching back to her first competitive race in San Diego, when she beat better-outfitted, more experienced kids. Des was a two-time All-American at Arizona State University, and as her collegiate years wound down, she decided she wasn’t done with the sport. Des gambled on herself and moved to Michigan to give professional running a try. As she rose through the elite ranks, she became increasingly determined to do things her way in an industry often bound by the status quo.

In her first book, readers will learn the story behind that resolve: the way Des trains, the way she thinks, her relationships with other great runners of her generation, and how much she values her family and friends. They’ll read about her deep connection to the most famous marathon in the world, her two very different Olympic experiences, and how she defined new goals and set a world record at the 50-kilometer distance.
 
Most of all, they’ll learn what makes her get up and run every day.

 

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Musical Tables

Billy Collins

You can spot a Billy Collins poem immediately. The amiable voice, the light touch, the sudden turn at the end. He "puts the ‘fun’  back in profundity,” says poet Alice Fulton. In his own words, his poems tend to “begin in Kansas and end in Oz.”

Now “America’s favorite poet” (The Wall Street Journal) has found a new form for his unique poetic style: the small poem. Here Collins writes about his trademark themes of nature, animals, poetry, mortality, absurdity, and love—all in a handful of lines. Neither haiku nor limerick, the small poem pushes to an extreme poetry’s famed power to condense emotional and conceptual meaning. Inspired by the small poetry of writers as diverse as William Carlos Williams, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, and Charles Simic, and written with Collins’s recognizable wit and wisdom, the poems of Musical Tables show one of our greatest poets channeling his unique voice into a new phase of his exceptional career.

3:00 AM

Only my hand
is asleep,
but it’s a start.

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Winnie and Nelson

Jonny Steinberg

One of the most celebrated political leaders of a century, Nelson Mandela has been written about by many biographers and historians. But in one crucial area, his life remains largely untold: his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. During his years in prison, Nelson grew ever more in love with an idealized version of his wife, courting her in his letters as if they were young lovers frozen in time. But Winnie, every bit his political equal, found herself increasingly estranged from her jailed husband’s politics. Behind his back, she was trying to orchestrate an armed seizure of power, a path he feared would lead to an endless civil war.

Jonny Steinberg tells the tale of this unique marriage—its longings, its obsessions, its deceits—turning the course of South African history into a page-turning political biography. Winnie and Nelson is a modern epic in which trauma doesn’t affect just the couple at its center, but an entire nation. It is also a Shakespearean drama in which bonds of love and commitment mingle with timeless questions of revolution, such as whether to seek retribution or a negotiated peace. In this story told with power and tender emotional insight, Steinberg reveals how far these forever entwined leaders would go for each other, and also where they drew the line. For in the end both knew theirs was not simply a marriage, but a struggle to define anti-apartheid itself.

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The Tea Sommelier

Jung-Sien Chih

This book introduces the art and science of matching tea with food, to bring out a synergy of flavors. It covers all the basics of tea, from selecting to brewing and serving, and introduces all the world's major tea varieties, from High-Mountain Oolong, to Pu-erh to Darjeeling. The main focus is on how tea marries with different foods, both Asian and Western. For example, it may be hard to believe, but tea can be a better match for cheese than wine! This book looks into various cuisines as well as specific dishes, recommending the teas that will enhance the dining experience. Illustrated with over 500 photos, The Tea Sommelier will appeal not only to tea enthusiasts, but to all foodies out there.

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Mind Over Batter

Jack Hazan

You may not realize it, but many essential therapeutic techniques can be accessed right in your own kitchen. In Mind over Batter, licensed psychotherapist and master baker Jack Hazan guides you through 75 simple, healing recipes that can help you tap into whatever you might be going through that day. Inspired by the Syrian and Middle Eastern baked goods he grew up with, along with his take on classic American desserts, recipes are organized into themed chapters based on common life moments and needs. In need of connection? Make some Pesto Pull-Apart Bread to share with your loved ones. Looking for a way to release some anxiety? Knead away your stress with a Chocolate Babka Crunch. Simply in need of some self-care? Whip up a single-serving indulgence like a Devil's Food Mug Cake. Throughout each chapter are invaluable exercises and "quick sessions" that connect baking processes to the evidence-based therapy tools Jack Hazan uses in his practice every day.

 

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Candle Craft

Tiana Coats

Stunning, safe custom candles made by you. Craft a serene atmosphere with hand-poured candles and inspiring scents. Candlemaking is as rewarding as it is relaxing; you can enjoy custom scents, colors, and holistic ingredients in one-of-a-kind candles that match your style and home decor. Candle Craft is your one-stop guide to mastering the craft from start to finish. Cut through the online clutter and learn from accomplished candlemaking business owner Tiana Coats as she shows you how to create candles that match your desired aesthetic and burn safely. You'll also find tips on selling your candles and starting your own creative business. Simply and successfully bring a sense of serenity to your home with beautiful handcrafted candles in any shape, color, and scent you can imagine. Get started with more than two dozen projects basic and specialty projects! Learn to share your projects with the world with Tiana's small business tips for starting and growing your own creative venture.

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Saving Time

Jenny Odell

In her first book, How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the “attention economy” to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don’t have time to spend?

In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently. Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism.

This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time—inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales—that can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility.

Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it—the way we experience time itself—and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can “save” time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.

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The Possibility of Life

Jaime Green

One of the most powerful questions humans ask about the cosmos is: Are we alone? While the science behind this inquiry is fascinating, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is a reflection of our values, our fears, and most importantly, our enduring sense of hope. In The Possibility of Life, acclaimed science journalist Jaime Green traces the history of our understanding, from the days of Galileo and Copernicus to our contemporary quest for exoplanets. Along the way, she interweaves insights from science fiction writers who construct worlds that in turn inspire scientists. Incorporating expert interviews, cutting-edge astronomy research, philosophical inquiry, and pop culture touchstones ranging from A Wrinkle in Time to Star Trek to Arrival, The Possibility of Life explores our evolving conception of the cosmos to ask an even deeper question: What does it mean to be human?

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Building

Mark Ellison

For forty years, Mark Ellison has worked in the most beautiful homes you’ve never seen, specializing in rarefied, lavish, and challenging projects for the most demanding of clients. He built a staircase that the architect Santiago Calatrava called a masterpiece. He constructed the sculpted core of Sky House, which Interior Design named “Apartment of the Decade.” His building projects have included the homes of David Bowie, Robin Williams, and others whose names he cannot reveal. He is regarded by many as the best carpenter in New York.

Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work tells the story of an unconventional education and how fulfillment can be found in doing something well for decades. Ellison takes us on a tour of the lofts, penthouses, and townhomes of New York’s elite, before they’re camera-ready. In a singular voice, he offers a window into learning to live meaningfully along the way. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed and algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, to the deceptive complexity of minimalist design, Building exposes the tangled wiring, scrapped blueprints, and outlandish demands that characterize life in the high-stakes world of luxury construction.

Blending Ellison’s musings on work and creativity with immersive storytelling and original sketches, photos, and illustrations, Building is a meditation on crafting a life worth living, and a delightful philosophical inquiry beyond the facades that we all live behind.

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Drama Free

Nedra Glover Tawwab

Every family has a story. For some of us, our family of origin is a solid foundation that feeds our confidence and helps us navigate life’s challenges. For others, it’s a source of pain, hurt, and conflict that can feel like a lifelong burden. In this empowering guide, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers clear advice for identifying dysfunctional family patterns and choosing the best path to breaking the cycle and moving forward.
Covering topics ranging from the trauma of emotional neglect, to the legacy of addicted or absent parents, to mental health struggles in siblings and other relatives, and more, this clear and compassionate guide will help you take control of your own life—and honor the person you truly are.

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An A-Z of Pasta

Rachel Roddy

This is the story of pasta. Award-winning food writer Rachel Roddy has lived and cooked in Rome for almost two decades. She has spent years browsing bucolic Italian markets, cooking with fresh and seasonal vegetables, discovering cheeses, and perfecting the art of making Italy’s favorite food: pasta. Now she has condensed everything she’s learned about pasta in a practical, highly entertaining collection of recipes that will ensure authentic Italian meals and take your pasta dishes to the next level. In this cookbook, you will learn the many ways to pair pasta shapes with sauces, how to make certain pastas from scratch and how to best serve them—from Cavatelli with Sausage, Mint, and Tomato to Fregula with Clams; and from Bucatini with Cauliflower, Saffron, and Anchovies to a spaghetti for every night of the week and a Bolognese-style lasagna. Here, too, are short essays that weave together the history, culture, and astonishing variety of pasta shapes from the tip to the toe of Italy.

Featuring the familiar favorites—pesto, ragù, and carbonara—and new twists on classics, as well as tricks and techniques for maximum flavor, An A-Z of Pasta is a glorious celebration of pasta and an excellent addition to any kitchen.

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Pests

Bethany Brookshire

An engrossing and revealing study of why we deem certain animals "pests" and others not--from cats to rats, elephants to pigeons--and what this tells us about our own perceptions, beliefs, and actions, as well as our place in the natural world

A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don't expect or want them, we respond with fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It's no longer an animal. It's a pest.

At the intersection of science, history, and narrative journalism, Pests is not a simple call to look closer at our urban ecosystem. It's not a natural history of the animals we hate. Instead, this book is about us. It's about what calling an animal a pest says about people, how we live, and what we want. It's a story about human nature, and how we categorize the animals in our midst, including bears and coyotes, sparrows and snakes. Pet or pest? In many cases, it's entirely a question of perspective.

Bethany Brookshire's deeply researched and entirely entertaining book will show readers what there is to venerate in vermin, and help them appreciate how these animals have clawed their way to success as we did everything we could to ensure their failure. In the process, we will learn how the pests that annoy us tell us far more about humanity than they do about the animals themselves.

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Above Ground

Clint Smith

Clint Smith's vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith's lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children's lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up--through the changing world of which we are all a part.

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Write for Life

Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron has been teaching the world about creativity since her seminal book, The Artist’s Way, first broke open the conversation around art.

Now, in Write for Life, she turns to one of the subjects closest to her heart: the art and practice of writing.

Over the course of six weeks, Cameron carefully guides readers step by step through the creative process. This latest guide in the Artist’s Way Series:

- Introduces a new tool and expands on powerful tried and true methods.

- Gently guides readers through many common creative issues — from procrastinating and getting started, to dealing with doubt, deadlines, and “crazymakers.”

- Will help you reach your goals, whether your project is a novel, poetry, screenplay, standup, or songwriting.

With the learned experience of a lifetime of writing, Cameron gives readers practical tools to start, pursue, and finish their writing project. Write for Life is an essential read for writers who have completed The Artist’s Way and are looking to continue their creative journey or new writers who are just putting pen to paper.

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American Wildflowers: a Literary Field Guide

Susan Barba

Organized as a field guide, a literary anthology filled with classic and contemporary poems and essays inspired by wildflowers--perfect for writers, artists, and botanists alike.

American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide collects poems, essays, and letters from the 1700s to the present that focus on wildflowers and their place in our culture and in the natural world. Editor Susan Barba has curated a selection of plants and texts that celebrate diversity: There are foreign-born writers writing about American plants and American writers on non-native plants. There are rural writers with deep regional knowledge and urban writers who are intimately acquainted with the nature in their neighborhoods. There are female writers, Black writers, gay writers, indigenous writers. There are botanists like William Bartram, George Washington Carver, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, and horticultural writers like Neltje Blanchan and Eleanor Perényi. There are prose pieces by Aldo Leopold, Lydia Davis, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. And most of all, there are poems: from Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams and T. S. Eliot to Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley, Lucille Clifton and Louise Glück, Natalie Diaz and Jericho Brown.

The book includes exquisite watercolors by Leanne Shapton throughout and is organized by species and botanical family--think of it as a field guide to the literary imagination.

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Flower Philosophy

Anna Potter

A celebration of season, Flower Philosophy presents a selection of beautiful arrangements designed to free readers from the pressures of perfection and instead encourage creative freedom, intuition and original results.
 
Flowers are not perfect, and flower arranging shouldn’t be either. Anna Potter teaches us how to listen and learn from nature to create something truly original with 25 combinations of stems and foliage. Free yourself from a prescriptive, one- size-fits-all approach and let each unique bloom inspire you with this refreshingly honest and liberating florist’s guide.

Arranged by season, Anna Potter guides you through the process of creating your own wreathes, bouquets and installations, all using flowers that can be bought, found and foraged from your neighborhood.

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An Admirable Point

Florence Hazrat

Few punctuation marks elicit quite as much love or hate as the exclamation mark. It's bubbly and exuberant, an emotional amplifier whose flamboyantly dramatic gesture lets the reader know: here be feelings! Scott Fitzgerald famously stated exclamation marks are like laughing at your own joke; Terry Pratchett had a character say that multiple !!! are a 'sure sign of a diseased mind'. So what's the deal with ! ?

 

Whether you think it's over-used, or enthusiastically sprinkle your writing with it, ! is inescapable. An Admirable Point recuperates the exclamation mark from its much maligned place at the bottom of the punctuation hierarchy. It explores how ! came about in the first place some six hundred years ago, and uncovers the many ways in which ! has left its mark on art, literature, (pop) culture, and just about any sphere of human activity--from Beowulf to spam emails, ee cummings to neuroscience.

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Wildlife Anatomy

Julia Rothman

Julia Rothman's series of Anatomy books are beloved by children and adults alike. In Wildlife Anatomy, Rothman captures the excitement and distinctive attributes of wild animals around the world. The book is packed with hundreds of her charming, original illustrations, detailing the unique features of animals of the rainforest, desert, grasslands, oceans, and much more. From lions, bears, and zebras to monkeys, mongoose, bats, elephants, giraffes, hippos, and much more, Rothman's visual guide covers all the key features, right down to the anatomy of a lion's claw and a wild horse's hoof. All the illustrations are accompanied by labels, intriguing facts, and identifying details, such as: When is a Panther Not a Panther? and What Makes Aardvarks So Odd? Rothman's characteristic combination of curiosity and an artist's eye makes this wildlife treasury rich and full, and promises new discoveries every time it's opened.

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Your Baby & Child

Penelope Leach

Penelope Leach has helped millions of parents raise their children for more than forty years with her thoroughly researched, practical, baby-led advice, her wise, empathic, and sensible perspective, and her comforting voice.
 
This new edition has been completely redesigned for today’s parents. Leach has revised the text to reflect the latest research on child development and learning as well as societal changes and the realities of our current world.
 
Your Baby & Child is essential for every new parent. In easy to follow stages from birth through age five (newborn, settled baby, older baby, toddler, young child), Your Baby & Child addresses parents’ every concern over the physical, emotional, and psychological well-being of their baby. Areas covered: feeding; physical growth and everyday care; sleeping; excreting and toilet mastery; crying and comforting; muscle power; seeing and understanding; hearing and learning to speak; playing and learning and thinking; learning how to behave.

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Cook As You Are

Ruby Tandoh

From last-minute inspiration for feeding an entire family to satisfying meals for just one person, easy one-pot dinners to no-chop recipes, in these pages Ruby Tandoh shares a feast of homey, globally inspired dishes. A no-nonsense collection of more than 100 accessible, affordable, achievable—and, most importantly, delicious—recipes (plus countless variations), Cook As You Are is an essential resource for every taste, every kitchen, and every body.

 

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Rough Sleepers

Tracy Kidder

When Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this illuminating book we travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.” 

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Declutter Your Photo Life

Adam Pratt

Now more than ever, we hold our photo collections dear. They are often some of our most prized possessions. Wouldn't it be great to finally have all your photos organized, safe, accessible, findable, and shareable? With Declutter Your Photo Life by your side, you have just what you need to achieve photo bliss.

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Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic

Simon Winchester

With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things--no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization--are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness?

Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion--from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundanaeum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium.

Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?

And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise?

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Fatherland

Burkhard Bilger

As a boy growing up in Oklahoma, Burkhard Bilger often heard his parents tell stories about the Germany of their youth. Winters in the Black Forest, when the snow piled up to the eaves and haunches of smoked speck hung from the rafters. Springtime along the Rhine, when the storks came home to nest on rooftops. His parents were born in 1935 and had lived through the Second World War, but those stories, vivid as they were, had strange omissions. His mother was a historian, yet she rarely talked about her father’s relationship to the Nazis, or his role in the war. Then one day a packet of letters arrived from Germany, yellowed with age, and a secret history began to unfold.

Karl Gönner was an elementary school teacher and father of four when the war began. In 1940, he was posted to a village in Alsace, in occupied France, and ordered to reeducate its children—to turn them into proper Germans. He was a loyal Nazi when he arrived, but as the war went on his allegiance wavered. According to some villagers, he risked his life shielding them from his own party’s brutalities. According to others, he ruled the village with an iron fist. After the war, Gönner was charged with giving an order that led police to beat a local farmer to death. Was he guilty or innocent? A war criminal or just an ordinary man, struggling to do right from within a monstrous regime?

Fatherland is the story of Bilger’s nearly ten-year quest to uncover the truth. It is a book of gripping suspense and moral inquiry—a tale of chance encounters and serendipitous discoveries in archives and villages across Germany and France. Long admired for his profiles in The New Yorker, Bilger brings the same open-hearted curiosity to his grandfather’s story and the questions it raises. What do we owe the past? How can we make peace with it without perpetuating its wrongs? Intimate and far-reaching, Fatherland is an extraordinary odyssey through the great upheavals of the past century.

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Saved

Benjamin Hall

When veteran war reporter Benjamin Hall woke up in Kyiv on the morning of March 14, 2022, he had no idea that, within hours, Russian bombs would nearly end his life. As a journalist for Fox News, Hall had worked in dangerous war zones like Syria and Afghanistan, but with three young daughters at home, life on the edge was supposed to be a thing of the past. Yet when Russia viciously attacked Ukraine in February 2022, Hall quickly volunteered to go. A few weeks later, while on assignment, Hall and his crew were blown up in a Russian strike. With Hall himself gravely injured and stuck in Kyiv, it was unclear if he would make it out alive.

This is the story of how he survived--a story that continues to this day. For the first time, Hall shares his experience in full--from his ground-level view of the war to his dramatic rescue to his arduous, and ongoing, recovery. Going inside the events that have permanently transformed him, Hall recalls his time at the front lines of our world's conflicts, exploring how his struggle to step away from war reporting led him back one perilous last time. Featuring nail-biting accounts from the many people across multiple countries who banded together to get him to safety, Hall offers a stunning look at complex teamwork and heartfelt perseverance that turned his life into a mission.

Through it all, Hall's spirit has remained undaunted, buoyed by that remarkable corps of people from around the world whose collective determination ensured his survival. Evocative, harrowing, and deeply moving, Saved is a powerful memoir of family and friends, of life and healing, and of how to respond when you are tested in ways you never thought possible.

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Looking Up

Matthew Cappucci

Get in—we’re going storm-chasing!

Imagine a very cool weather nerd has just pulled up to you and yelled this out the window of his custom-built armored storm-chasing truck. The wind is whipping around, he’s munching on Wawa, it’s all very chaotic—yet as you look into his grinning face, you feel the greatest surge of adrenaline you have ever felt in your life. Hallelujah: your cavalry is here!

Welcome to the brilliance of Looking Up, the lively new book from rising meterology star Matthew Cappucci. He’s a meteorologist for The Washington Post, and you might think of him as Doogie Howser meets Bill Paxton from Twister, with a dash of Leonardo DiCaprio from Catch Me If You Can. A self-proclaimed weather nerd, at the age of fourteen he talked his way into delivering a presentation on waterspouts at the American Meteorological Society's annual broadcast conference by fudging his age on the application and created his own major on weather science while an undergrad at Harvard.

Combining reportage and accessible science with personal storytelling and infectious enthusiasm, Looking Up is a riveting ride through the state of our weather and a touching story about parents and mentors helping a budding scientist achieve his improbable dreams. Throughout, readers get a tutorial on the basics of weather science and the impact of the climate.

As our country’s leaders sound the alarm on climate change, few people have as close a view to how serious the situation actually is than those whose job is to follow the weather, which is the daily dose of climate we interact with and experience every day.

The weather affects every aspect of our lives (even our art) as well as our future. The way we think about it requires a whole-life overhaul. Rain or shine, tropical storm or twister, Cappucci is here to help us begin the process.

So get in his storm-chasing truck already, will ya?

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Succulents Made Easy

Yoshinobu Kondo

This essential beginner's guide provides a complete introduction to growing and combining succulents in ways that are healthy for the plants and pleasing to the eye. It also gives an overview of the most popular succulent and cacti varieties.

This book includes:

  • Advice on preparing and potting your succulents.
  • Tips on how to propagate new plants from your existing ones.
  • Ways to create attractive combinations that can be enjoyed year-round.
  • Colorful field guides to over 200 different succulent and cacti varieties.
  • And much more!

Throughout the book, color photographs brim with new ideas that will inspire you to tell a unique story through your greenery. With this book as your guide, you're certain to create a beautiful personalized garden that will be sure to impress your friends and bring you joy.

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Bliss on Toast

Prue Leith

There is nothing more comforting and delicious than toast. And when you top it with a few cleverly paired ingredients, it becomes a full meal—not to mention pure bliss. In Bliss on Toast, Great British Baking Show judge Prue Leith toasts sourdoughs, focaccias, baguettes, flatbreads and more, then pairs them with everything from seasonal vegetables to meat and fish. The collection spans healthy, hearty, salty, and sometimes sweet. Ideal for a busy home cook who loves a full and balanced plate, the recipes are incredibly versatile and perfect for any time of the day: tomatoes, shallots, and oregano on black olive toast; grilled chicken tikka with yogurt on naan; smoked salmon, wasabi, and avocado on multigrain bread; and bananas and ice cream with brandy syrup on panettone. Bliss on Toast is as much a toolkit for quick fridge-raids as it is inspiration for seasonal delights. With 82 years’ experience of good eating and 60 years of cooking, writing about and judging food, there is no one who better knows what makes a meal bliss than Prue Leith.

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Made with Love

Tom Daley

During the Tokyo Olympics, British diver Tom Daley was often spotted calming his nerves with knitting needles in hand. His new favorite hobby, which he picked up during the Covid lockdown, combined with his gold medal performance, won him a new legion of fans. In fact, his Olympic inspired cardigan, made just before he left for Japan, grabbed nearly as many headlines as his win.

In his native England, Daley is beloved as a four-time Olympic medalist, well-known television personality, and activist in the LGBTQ space. In addition, Daley and his husband, the Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, are the parents of a toddler son, and many of Tom's projects are adorable toys or clothes for Robbie.

Now Tom has created thirty original projects for this book, sharing his joy of knitting and crocheting as a calming and creative outlet alongside his charming, witty personality. Full color and totally bespoke for this book, these projects run the gamut from toys to clothing for adults and kids to home décor. Full of color, full of joy, and Made with Love(tm) (the name of Tom's online store, selling projects, patterns and branded merchandise) this is yarn crafts made very cool.

 

 

 

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The Pasta Queen

Nadia Caterina Munno

In the first-ever cookbook from TikTok star and social media sensation Nadia Caterina Munno—a.k.a. The Pasta Queen—is opening the recipe box from her online trattoria to share the dishes that have made her pasta royalty. In this delectable antipasto platter of over 100 recipes, cooking techniques, and the tales behind Italy’s most famous dishes (some true, some not-so-true), Nadia guides you through the process of creating the perfect pasta, from a bowl of naked noodles to a dish large and complex enough to draw tears from the gods. Whether it’s her viral Pasta Al Limone, a classic Carbonara, or a dish that’s entirely Nadia’s—like her famous Assassin’s Spaghetti—The Pasta Queen’s recipes will enchant even the newest of pasta chefs.

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Knitting the National Parks

Nancy Bates

From the brightly colored pebbles of Lake McDonald in Montana’s Glacier National Park to the regal granite cliffs of El Capitan and Half Dome in California’s Yosemite Valley, the US National Parks contain some of the most recognizable and iconic natural landmarks in the world. Capture the majesty each national park offers with original beanie patterns created by knitting designer and outdoor enthusiast Nancy Bates.

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The Philosophy of Modern Song

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan, who began working on the book in 2010, offers his extraordinary insight into the nature of popular music. He writes over sixty essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyzes what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal. These essays are written in Dylan’s unique prose. They are mysterious and mercurial, poignant and profound, and often laugh-out-loud funny. And while they are ostensibly about music, they are really meditations and reflections on the human condition. Running throughout the book are nearly 150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work’s transcendence.

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Number One Is Walking

Steve Martin

Steve Martin has never written about his career in the movies before. In Number One Is Walking, he shares anecdotes from the sets of his beloved films—Father of the Bride, Roxanne, The Jerk, Three Amigos, and many more—bringing readers directly into his world. He shares charming tales of antics, moments of inspiration, and exploits with the likes of Paul McCartney, Diane Keaton, Robin Williams, and Chevy Chase. Martin details his forty years in the movie biz, as well as his stand-up comedy, banjo playing, writing, and cartooning, all with his unparalleled wit.

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