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Notes on Surviving the Fire

"When Sarah's only friend in her graduate program is found dead of an alleged heroin overdose, she is forced back into the orbit of the man in their department who assaulted her. A hurtling ride of a novel-darkly funny and propulsive. At a PhD program in southern California, Sarah and her best friend Nathan spend their time working on their theses, getting high, and keeping track of the poor air quality due to nearby forest fires. No one believes Sarah when she reports a fellow student for raping her at a party-"he's such a good guy!"-and the Title IX office simply files away the information, just like the police. Nathan is the only person who cares. When Sarah finds him dead of an overdose from a drug he's always avoided, she knows something isn't right. She starts investigating his death as a murder, and as the pieces fall into place, she notices a disturbing pattern in the other student deaths on campus. As a girl, Sarah grew up in the forests of Maine, following her father on hunts, learning how to stalk prey and kill but only when necessary. Now, she must confront a different type of killing-and decide if it can be justified. Notes on Surviving the Fire is a story about vengeance, the insidious nature of rape culture and ultimately, a woman's journey to come back to herself."-- Provided by publisher

Uncharted

"A disastrous debate, a would-be assassin's bullet, an electrifying eleventh hour candidate swap, dramatic & surprising VP selections, betrayals behind closed doors, charges of a stolen election, game-changing blunders - the 2024 presidential election is a political saga of Shakespearean proportions. In minute-by-minute detail, esteemed White House historian & political analyst Chris Whipple chronicles the unprecedented drama as it unfolds, documenting the true story of the Harris & Trump campaigns and the difficult, urgent decisions made in the back rooms of power, with the future of American democracy at stake. Alternating between the Biden/Harris/Walz & the Trump/Vance camps, Whipple tells the story of campaign 2024, drawing on his unique access to exclusive sources on both sides, including conversations with members of the candidates' inner circles." -- Provided by publisher

Why Congress

"To achieve legitimate self-government in America's extended Republic, the U.S. Constitution depends on Congress harmonizing the country's factions through a process of conflict and accommodation. Why Congress demonstrates the value of this activity by showing the legislature's distinctive contributions in two crucial moments in the mid-twentieth century: during World War II, when congressional deliberation contributed to national cohesion by balancing interests and ensuring fairness, and during the push to end racial segregation, when a prolonged debate in Congress focused the nation's attention and delivered a decisive victory for the broad coalition united around civil rights. The second part of the book traces the evolution of Congress, which first experimented with radical decentralization in the 1970s and then, beginning in the 1980s, embraced powerful leadership and ideological caucuses that prioritized partisan unity and electoral confrontation. This transformed institution has been unable to work through the country's deep divisions on contemporary issues like immigration or the COVID-19 pandemic. Contemporary policymaking often circumvents Congress entirely. In other instances, Congress is engaged, but it proceeds without any bipartisan cooperation or through leader-broken compromises generated by crises. Each of these patterns creates serious difficulties for legitimating American policy. The book concludes with three scenarios for Congress's future. Without significant change, the institution will sink into decrepitude. But it could still be transformed, either by progressive constitutional reform empowering the president at the legislature's expense, or by a revival of meaningful deliberation and debate facilitated by the renewal of the committee system."-- Provided by publisher

Vanishing World

"From the author of the million-copy literary sensation Convenience Store Woman comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples has vanished and where all children are born by artificial insemination. Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of a happily unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman convinced she is an alien in Earthlings have endeared her to readers worldwide. Vanishing World takes Murata's universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different to our own. As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents 'copulated' in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange 'system' by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage-sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest-Amane and her husband Saku ultimately decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only 'Kodomo-chan.' Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?"-- Provided by publisher

To Be a Jewish State

"What does it mean for Israel to be a Jewish state? What is Zionism's relation to Judaism? And what happens to Judaism when it is "nationalized", i.e., read, interpreted, and practiced in a manner that serves the interests of the modern, sovereign nation-state? These questions and others that derive from them are at the center of To Be a Jewish State."-- Provided by publisher

Tilt

"Last night, you and I were safe. Last night, in another universe, your father and I stood fighting in the kitchen. Annie is nine months pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when a massive earthquake hits Portland, Oregon. With no way to reach her husband, no phone or money, and a city left in chaos, there's nothing to do but walk. Making her way across the wreckage of Portland, Annie experiences human desperation and kindness: strangers offering help, a riot at a grocery store, and an unlikely friendship with a young mother. As she walks, Annie reflects on her struggling marriage, her disappointing career, and her anxiety about having a baby. If she can just make it home, she's determined to change her life."-- Provided by publisher

Powers of Reading

"Reading, be it silent or loud, be it addressed to oneself or to another, is the site of entangled power relations: it is the micropolitics of the distribution of voices."-- Provided by publisher

The Power of Nuclear

"From the pilot's seat in the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, to Chernobyl's exclusion zone and to the site in Finland where highly radioactive waste will be buried, this is the incredible story of nuclear power. Providing a vivid account of the characters and events that have shaped the world's most controversial energy source and our thinking around it, The Power of Nuclear weaves politics, culture and technology to explore nuclear power's past and future. In his quest to disentangle myth from facts, Marco Visscher asks: How dangerous is radiation? What should you do after a nuclear accident? Have nuclear weapons really made the world less safe? And why do some still reject the evidence showing the atom can provide unlimited clean energy, free countries of their dependence on fossil fuels and combat climate change? This is an informed look at what we might do with nuclear power - and what nuclear power is doing to us." -- Back cover

No Longer Human

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.

Mornings without Mii

"A beloved Japanese modern classic that chronicles the author's twenty-year bond with her cat, meditating on solitude, independence, and the writing life."-- Provided by publisher

Moral Feelings, Moral Reality, and Moral Progress

"This book consists of two essays that are related to each other: "Gut Feelings and Moral Knowledge" and "Moral Reality and Moral Progress." The longer second essay has not been previously published. Both are concerned with moral epistemology and our means of access to moral truth; both are concerned with moral realism and with the resistance to subjectivist and reductionist accounts of morality; and both are concerned with the historical development of moral knowledge. The second essay also proposes an account of the historical development of moral truth, according to which it does not share the timelessness of scientific truth. This is because moral truth must be based on reasons that are accessible to the individuals to whom they apply, and such accessibility depends on historical developments."-- Provided by publisher

Meltdown

"Credit Suisse was a 166-year-old bastion of global banking. But a veneer of high-class service disguised a darker, much dirtier reality. From its sterile Zurich headquarters, Credit Suisse banked dictators and drug dealers, hid stolen Nazi gold, and helped corrupt bankers fleece the firm's own clients of billions of dollars. Its top executives oversaw a global operation that laundered money for autocrats; they hired spies to track one another through the cobbled streets of the Swiss financial capital; and they helped clients hide their money from the world's tax authorities. This is the story of a tawdry total meltdown of one of the biggest, most influential, and most scandal-ridden banks on the planet. Duncan Mavin is uniquely sourced to tell the story of Credit Suisse's scandal-ridden demise, with dozens of inside-the-room contacts that spill exclusive details about the bank onto these pages. The bank's collapse, in March of last year, was the biggest shock to the financial system since the Financial Crisis of 2008, and sparked a media frenzy. But only Duncan has had access to key sources within the bank's executive suite--including former CEOs--and the inner circle that brings this critical, rollicking story to life." -- Amazon

The Maverick's
Museum

From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new portrait of America's first great collector of modern art, Albert Coombs Barnes. Raised in a Philadelphia slum shortly after the Civil War, Barnes rose to earn a medical degree and then made a fortune from a pioneering antiseptic treatment for newborns. Never losing sight of the working-class neighbors of his youth, Barnes became a ruthless advocate for their rights and needs. His vast art collection -- 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos -- was dedicated to enriching their cultural lives. A miner was more likely to get access than a mine owner. Gopnik's meticulous research reveals Barnes as a fierce advocate for the egalitarian ideals of his era's progressive movement. But while his friends in the movement worked to reshape American society, Barnes wanted to transform the nation's aesthetic life, taking art out of the hands of the elite and making it available to the average American. The Maverick's Museum offers a vivid picture of one of America's great eccentrics. The sheer ferocity of Barnes's democratic ambitions left him with more enemies than allies among people of all classes, but for a circle of intimates, he was a model of intelligence, generosity, and loyalty. In this compelling portrait, Gopnik reveals a life shaped by contradictions, one that left a lasting impact. -- Provided by publisher

Lucky Valley

"Written in 1774, Edward Long's History of Jamaica, attempted to define White and Black as essentially different and unequal. Catherine Hall unpicks the contradictions in Long's thinking, exposing the insidious myths and stereotypes that have allowed reconfigured forms of racial difference and racial capitalism to live on in contemporary societies."-- Provided by publisher

I Dream of Joni

"The eternal singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell is seen anew, portrayed through a witty and comprehensive exploration of anecdotes, quotes, and lyrics by "the most graceful of humorists" (Vanity Fair) and author of And Then We Danced."-- Provided by publisher

How to Write a Funny Speech...

"Learn how to write and give a flawlessly funny speech for any occasion with Emmy-winning comedy writers Carol Leifer and Rick Mitchell. With a foreword by Carol Burnett."-- Provided by publisher

Hot Air

"A mischievous story of money, marriage, sex, and revenge unspools when a billionaire crashes his hot air balloon into the middle of a post-pandemic first date. Joannie hasn't been on a date in seven years when Johnny invites her to dinner. His house is beautiful, his son is sweet, and their first kiss is, well, it's not the best, but Joannie could convince herself it was nice enough. But when Joannie's childhood crush, a summer camp fling turned famous billionaire, crash lands his hot air balloon in Johnny's swimming pool, Joannie dives in. Soon she finds herself alighting on a lost weekend with Johnny the bad kisser, Jonathan, the billionaire, and Julia his beautiful but manipulative wife. Does Joannie want Jonathan? Or does Jonathan want his assistant, Vivian? Does Joannie want Julia? Or does Julia want a baby like Joannie's? A tale of lust and money and lust for money, Hot Air is as astonishing as it is blisteringly funny, a delirious, delicious story for our billionaire era."-- Provided by publisher

Henry James Comes Home

"In this enthralling re-creation of American novelist Henry James' famous ten-month trip around the United States, lauded critic Peter Brooks brings to life both the literary giant and America in its Gilded Age. In 1904, after two decades of living and travelling abroad, Henry James returned to the United States to discover a world drastically different from the one he had left behind. Suddenly, the future of world seemed to be in his native land, which he had once considered provincial, lacking in nourishment for the novelist. James thus set forth to refamiliarize himself with the United States, travelling the width and breadth of the land and exercising his acute powers of observation to document all that he saw. James's ten-month journey across America and its product, the ethnographic work The American Scene, are the focus of Henry James Comes Home, scholar and literary critic Peter Brooks's dazzling follow-up to his book Henry James Goes to Paris. Brooks combines biography and criticism to recreate James's American journey, tracing his travels around New England, down south to Florida, across the Midwest, up the coast of California and eventually to Seattle and Portland. For James, being American was 'a complex fate,' and Brooks shows how James's keen remarks on rampant materialism and the challenges at the heart of democracy are still of enduring relevance to us in this day."-- Provided by publisher

Goddess Complex

"Sanjana Satyananda is trying to recover her life. It's been a year since she walked out on her husband, a struggling actor named Killian, at a commune in India, after a disagreement about whether to have children. Now, Sanjana is struggling to resurrect her busted anthropology dissertation and crashing at her annoyingly perfect sister's while her well-adjusted peers obsess over marriages, mortgages, and motherhood. Sanjana needs to move forward--and finalize her divorce, ASAP. There's just one problem: Killian is missing. As Sanjana tries to track him down, she's bombarded with unnerving calls from women seeking her advice on pregnancy and fertility. Soon, Sanjana comes face to face with what her life might have been if she'd chosen parenthood. And the road not taken turns out to be wilder, stranger, and more tempting than she imagined." -- Provided by publisher

The Dream Hotel

"Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA's algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom."-- Provided by publisher

The Crossing

"A radical work of history that re-centers the American story around El Paso, Texas, gateway between north and south, center of indigenous power and resistance, locus of European colonization of North America, centuries-long hub of immigration, and underappreciated modern blueprint for a changing United States."-- From publisher description

A Climate of Truth

"Mike Berners-Lee finds new perspectives on the climate and ecological emergency by standing further back, digging deeper and joining up every element of the Polycrisis that we face. The need for radically higher standards of honesty emerges as the single most critical leverage issue for those seeking real change."-- Provided by publisher

Atomic Dreams

"On June 21, 2016, Pacific Gas & Electric Company announced a plan to shutter California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, in 2025. The plan was hailed by environmental groups and politicians around the country. Then, in 2022, the state’s Democratic establishment suddenly reversed the decision, and in 2024 the Biden-Harris administration awarded the plant $1.1 billion in credits to extend its life. What happened in between? In Atomic Dreams, journalist and lifelong environmentalist Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow unearths the surprising answers—and the deep-seated conflicts behind them. She follows the fascinating and lively cast of characters who are immersed in the fight over Diablo Canyon and nuclear energy, among them a world-renowned climate scientist, a fashion model turned “nuclear influencer,” and two radically opposed groups of mothers, both fiercely advocating for the kind of planet they want their children to inherit. And she chronicles how nuclear power has morphed from the stuff of cinematic nightmares—associated with world-ending weapons and terrifying meltdowns—to a rare issue with strong bipartisan support. Tuhus-Dubrow takes readers to nuclear plants and research facilities, to the halls of Congress and into the streets with activists as she explores the big questions wrapped up in the nuclear debate: questions about risk and responsibility, about nature and technology, about whether humans should be humble caretakers of the Earth or audacious innovators. She explores how these issues affect real people’s lives, and personally grapples with the viability of this controversial energy source. Can the power of the atom be freed from its historical baggage and reinvented? Could something that once threatened to doom us now hold the potential to save us?" -- Book jacket

Adaptable

"A new understanding of how our bodies work, how to keep them healthy, and how our biological diversity unites us rather than divides us. How does the body work-and why does it seem to work so differently for each of us? Why do we grow tall or short, obese or slim? Why do some of us stay healthy despite our bad habits while others who do all the right things fall ill? When we look around the planet, why do people vary in skin color, facial features, stature, body proportions, and disease risk? The answer is both simple and powerful: we're different because we're adaptable. Over the past 100,000 years, as humans expanded into every biome on the planet, our bodies were fine-tuned to our local environments. Adaptability is at the heart of being human and the engine of our diversity. Variation isn't a bug, it's a feature. As an evolutionary anthropologist working with human populations around the globe, Pontzer's research embraces our incredible diversity, documenting the connections between lifestyle, landscape, local adaptations, and health." -- Provided by publisher