ODY New Books Collection

American Laughter, American Fury

"This work demonstrates how so-called 'comical' practices, including not only jokes but also carnivalesque misrule, playing Indian, and wearing blackface helped white men cast "America" as a land and nation in which only they were entitled to citizenship." -- Provided by publisher.

Mothers and Sons

"At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is hurt by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago put behind her the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter's case plunges him further into the fraught memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart. With unsurpassed emotional depth, Mothers and Sons reveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and the love that might be restored by facing it."-- Dust jacket flap

The Three Lives of Cate Kay

"Cate Kay knows how to craft a story. As the creator of a bestselling book trilogy that struck box office gold as a film series, she's one of the most successful authors of her generation. The thing is, Cate Kay doesn't really exist. She's never attended author events or granted any interviews. Her real identity had been a closely guarded secret, until now. As a young adult, she and her best friend Amanda dreamed of escaping their difficult homes and moving to California to become movie stars. But the day before their grand adventure, a tragedy shattered their dreams and Cate has been on the run ever since, taking on different names and charting a new future. But after a shocking revelation, Cate understands that returning home is the only way she'll be a whole person again."-- Amazon.com

I'm
Laughing Because I'm
Crying

Comedian Youngmi Mayer recounts her childhood and adolescence as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan. With humor and irreverence, she shares difficult moments in her past, including her family's struggles during the last century of colonialism, her mother's marriage to a man who looked like "white Jesus," and her current life as a single mom in New York City. By joking through her own story, she hopes to pass on her family's gift to her: the gift of laughing while crying, which Mayer's mother always said would make "hair grow out of your butthole."

The Golden Passport

"The Golden Passport is the first on-the-ground investigation of 'investor citizenship.' Some 50,000 people annually pay cash for citizenship in various microstates desperate for investment. Kristin Surak uncovers the surprising motivations of the buyers, the effects on seller-state locals, and the geopolitical dynamics driving the industry."-- Provided by publisher

Death of the Author

A disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful sci-fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative.

The Woman Who Knew Everyone

"Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in America, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents-Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle's life -- "Call Me Madam" -- which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie. A pioneering supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, she was a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and rescued Harry Truman's financially flailing 1948 campaign. In this intensely researched biography, author Meryl Gordon chronicles Perle's lavish life and society adventures in Newport, Manhattan and Washington, while highlighting her important, but nearly forgotten contribution to American politics and the feminist movement."-- Provided by publisher

The Waiting Game

Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets. But they also held a unique power. A quiet word behind the scenes, an appropriately timed gift, a well-negotiated marriage alliance were all forms of political agency wielded. The Waiting Game explores the daily lives of ladies-in-waiting, revealing the secrets of recruitment, costume, what they ate, where (and with whom) they slept. -- adapted from publisher description

Vantage Point

Clara and her brother, Teddy, grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents' tragic deaths, haunted by rumors and paparazzi. Fourteen years later, they've mostly put their turbulent past to rest. Teddy has married Clara's best friend, Jess, and the three of them have moved back home to take over the sprawling, remote family mansion known as Vantage Point.

Too Soon

"A funny, sexy, and heart-wrenching literary debut that explores exile, ambition, and hope across three generations of Palestinian American women."-- Provided by publisher

The Sirens' Call

"From the NYT-bestselling author and television and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society."-- Provided by publisher

The Secret History of the Rape Kit

"In 1972, Martha "Marty" Goddard volunteered at a crisis hotline, counseling girls who had been molested. By the end of the decade, she had launched a campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence of sexual assault and treat survivors with dignity. She designed a new kind of forensics tool -- the rape kit -- and new practices of evidence collection that spread across the country. Yet even as Marty fought for women's rights, she allowed a man to take credit for her work and then vanished into obscurity. [This book] chronicles one journalist's mission to understand an crucial innovation and the problematic history of forensics in America. As Pagan Kennedy hunts for answers to the mystery of Marty Goddard, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault and her desire for justice."-- Page 4 of cover

Outraged

"In this insightful tour of the moral mind, Gray provides a groundbreaking new framework for our moral foundations that rewrites our understanding of where moral judgments come from, and how we can overcome the feelings of outrage that so often divide us."-- Provided by publisher

Open Socrates

"Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? He is famous for his humility, but readers often find him arrogant and condescending. We parrot his claim that "the unexamined life is not worth living," yet take no steps to live examined ones. We know that he was tried, convicted, and executed for "corrupting the youth," but freely assign Socratic dialogues to today's youths, to introduce them to philosophy. We've lost sight of what made him so dangerous. In Open Socrates, acclaimed philosopher Agnes Callard recovers the radical move at the center of Socrates' thought, and shows why it is still the way to a good life. Callard draws our attention to Socrates' startling discovery that we don't know how to ask ourselves the most important questions--about how we should live, and how we might change. Before a person even has a chance to reflect, their bodily desires or the forces of social conformity have already answered on their behalf. To ask the most important questions, we need help. Callard argues that the true ambition of the famous "Socratic method" is to reveal what one human being can be to another. You can use another person in many ways--for survival, for pleasure, for comfort--but you are engaging them to the fullest when you call on them to help answer your questions and challenge your answers. Callard shows that Socrates' method allows us to make progress in thinking about how to manage romantic love, how to confront one's own death, and how to approach politics. In the process, she gives us nothing less than a new ethics to live by."-- Dust jacket

My Darling Boy

"Known for his tragicomic voice and unforgettable characters, John Dufresne tells the story of Olney, whose beloved son, Cully, collapses into addiction and vanishes into the chaotic netherworld of southern Florida. Aided by his terminally ill girlfriend and the colorful inhabitants of a local motel--including a doomsday prepper, an ex-nun, a pair of blind twins with an acute sense of smell, and a devoutly Catholic shelter worker--Olney sets out to save his son. Hilarious and devastating in equal measure, My Darling Boy is a hero's quest for our time, a testament to families touched by the opioid crisis, and a remarkable achievement from one of our most talented authors." -- Provided by publisher

More than Pretty Boxes

"For a widely dreaded, mundane task, organizing one's possessions has taken a surprising hold on our cultural imagination. For those with enough means and/or desperation, there are people who can be hired to help declutter. Here Carrie M. Lane introduces us to the world of professional organizers and offers new insight into the domains of work and home, forever entangled--especially for women. Organizers choose their profession out of a need for creativity, flexibility, and opportunities for growth that are increasingly difficult to find in the modern workplace, and the stories they tell about work with clients are fascinating. In that sense, organizing is a good job in an era of bad jobs, one that can help us see more clearly the limitations and disadvantages of many of the other forms of work available to Americans today. In a world where unhappy workers outnumber happy ones by two to one, most professional organizers love their work. But while this system of hiring women to perform the previously unpaid labor of other women assuages some of the pains of contemporary life, it also distracts us from systemic problems around the way Americans are expected to work today, both in paid positions and in their unpaid labors for the household. Ultimately, More Than Pretty Boxes shows that the way we live and work today is not working, especially not for women. There is a palpable 'too muchness' to everyday life that demands an unsustainable level of work and worry. Organizers aren't the answer to this crisis, but through their career choices and their work with clients, organizers can help us better understand both the nature of the problem and the sorts of solace, support, and solutions that might help ease it."-- Provided by publisher

Hope

"Hope is the first autobiography in history ever to be published by a Pope. Written over six years, this complete autobiography starts in the early years of the twentieth century, with Pope Francis's Italian roots and his ancestors' courageous migration to Latin America, continuing through his childhood, the enthusiasms and preoccupations of his youth, his vocation, adult life, and the whole of his papacy up to the present day."-- Provided by publisher

Golden Years

"On farms and in factories, Americans once had little choice but to work until death. As the nation prospered, a new idea was born: the right to a dignified and secure old age. That project has benefited millions, but it remains incomplete-and today it's under siege. In Golden Years, historian James Chappel shows how old age first emerged as a distinct stage of life and how it evolved over the last century, shaped by politicians' choices, activists' demands, medical advancements, and cultural models from utopian novels to The Golden Girls. Only after World War II did government subsidies and employer pensions allow people to retire en masse. Just one generation later, this model crumbled. Older people streamed back into the workforce, and free-market policymakers pushed the burdens of aging back onto older Americans and their families. We now confront an old age mired in contradictions: ever longer lifespans and spiraling health-care costs, 401(k)s and economic precarity, unprecedented opportunity and often disastrous instability. As the population of older Americans grows, Golden Years urges us to look to the past to better understand old age today-and how it could be better tomorrow."-- Provided by publisher

Going Home

"A funny, achingly sad, sneakily wise story of family and what happens when three men--all of whom are completely ill-suited for fatherhood-take charge of a toddler following his mother's sudden death. Boy-made-good Téo Erskine is back in the north London suburb of his youth, visiting his father--stubborn, selfish, complicated Vic. Things have changed for Téo: he's got a steady job, a brand-new car and a London flat all concrete and glass, with a sliver of a river view. Except, underneath the surface, not much has changed at all. He's still the boy seeking his father's approval; still the young man playing late-night poker with his best friend, unreliable, infuriating Ben Mossam; still the one desperately in love with the enigmatic Lia. Lia's life, on the other hand, has been transformed: now a single mother to two-year-old Joel, she doesn't have time for anyone--not even herself. When the unthinkable happens, Joel finds himself at the center of a strange constellation of men--Téo, Vic, Ben--none of whom is fully equipped to look after him, but whose strange, tentative attempts at love might just be enough to offer him a new place to call home."-- Provided by publisher

Evolution Evolving

"A new scientific view of evolution is emerging -- one that challenges and expands our understanding of how evolution works. Recent research demonstrates that organisms differ greatly in how effective they are at evolving. Whether and how each organism adapts and diversifies depends critically on the mechanistic details of how that organism operates;its development, physiology, and behavior. That is because the evolutionary process itself has evolved over time, and continues to evolve. The scientific understanding of evolution is evolving too, with groundbreaking new ways of explaining evolutionary change. In this book, a group of leading biologists draw on the latest findings in evolutionary genetics and evo-devo, as well as novel insights from studies of epigenetics, symbiosis, and inheritance, to examine the central role that developmental processes play in evolution. Written in an accessible style, and illustrated with fascinating examples of natural history, the book presents recent scientific discoveries that expand evolutionary biology beyond the classical view of gene transmission guided by natural selection. Without undermining the central importance of natural selection and other Darwinian foundations, new developmental insights indicate that all organisms possess their own characteristic sets of evolutionary mechanisms. The authors argue that a consideration of developmental phenomena is needed for evolutionary biologists to generate better explanations for adaptation and biodiversity. This book provides a new vision of adaptive evolution." -- From Princeton University Press website