ODY New Books Collection

The Oak and the Larch

"Russia has three times as many trees as there are stars in our galaxy. From the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the steppes of Central Asia, Russia's forests account for nearly one-fifth of the world's wooded lands. In this astonishing work of cultural and environmental history, award-winning journalist, critic, and scholar Sophie Pinkham presents the first-ever English-language exploration of this vast expanse, offering an eloquent and absorbing account of how forests have shaped Russia. Written from the ground up, The Oak and the Larch spans centuries, from medieval times to the present, and draws on literature, art, music, and original reportage. Pinkham describes the varied forests and trees that grow within Russia's borders, from the hardy Siberian larch to the majestic oaks of central Russia, and the diverse peoples who live deep in the Russian wilderness and make their living there. She analyzes the forest's role in Russia's long history of imperial conquest-including its attacks on Ukraine today-and discusses the ways the mythologies of the forest shaped Russian culture, from pre-Christian forest spirits to the great works of Russian literature, from Turgenev to Tolstoy, from Chekhov to Nabokov and beyond. By examining Russia from the forest's perspective, The Oak and the Larch offers an urgent new understanding of the nature of Russian power, and of Russia's ideas of itself."-- Provided by publisher

Lost Lambs

"Lost Lambs follows a suburban family of five unspooling at the seams, navigating a disastrous open marriage, teenage rebellion, and an unexpected human trafficking/body-hacking crime conspiracy." -- Provided by publisher

The Last of Earth

"1869. Tibet is closed to Europeans, an infuriating obstruction for the rapidly expanding British Empire. In response, Britain begins training Indians-permitted to cross borders that white men may not-to undertake illicit, dangerous surveying expeditions into Tibet. Balram is one such surveyor-spy, an Indian schoolteacher who, for several years, has worked for the British, often alongside his dearest friend, Gyan. But Gyan went missing on his last expedition and is rumored to be imprisoned within Tibet. Desperate to rescue his friend, Balram agrees to guide an English captain on a foolhardy mission: After years of paying others to do the exploring, the captain, disguised as a monk, wants to personally chart a river that runs through southern Tibet. Their path will cross fatefully with that of another Westerner in disguise, fifty-year-old Katherine. Denied a fellowship in the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London, she intends to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa. As Balram and Katherine make their way into Tibet, they will face storms and bandits, snow leopards and soldiers, fevers and frostbite. What's more, they will have to battle their own doubts, ambitions, grief, and pasts in order to survive the treacherous landscape. A polyphonic novel about the various ways humans try to leave a mark on the world-from the enduring nature of family and friendship to the egomania and obsessions of the colonial enterprise--The Last of Earth confirms Deepa Anappara as one of our greatest and most ambitious storytellers."-- Provided by publisher

A Journey North

"These topics, scattered as they might seem at first, reflect the breadth of these men's interests in entomology, racial classification, botany, and linguistics and their ideas about horticulture, history, and anthropology. The northern journey allows us to see Jefferson and Madison in a different light, not just as politicians, but as tourists and friends. The journey, from May 21 to June 16, 1791, was taken at a precarious moment. Political parties had emerged that pitted Jefferson and Madison on one side and Alexander Hamilton and John Adams on the other, feuding over issues that would determine the future of the nation. The trip provided escape from the cauldron of political engagement and its toll on their spirits and physical well-being. A gambol through upstate New York and parts of New England offered them the promise of recovering both."-- Provided by publisher

The Infamous Gilberts

Thornwalk, a once-stately English manor, is on the brink of transformation. Its keys are being handed over to a luxury hotelier who will undertake a complete renovation, but in doing so, what will they erase? Through the keen eyes of an enigmatic neighbor, the listener is taken on a guided tour into rooms filled with secrets and memories, each revealing the story of the five Gilbert siblings.

How Rabbis Became Experts

"This book tells the story of how a small group of Jewish scholars became religious experts within the Jewish communities of Roman Palestine from the second through fifth centuries C.E. -- thereby becoming the first rabbis."-- Publisher

Football

"A hilarious but nonetheless groundbreaking contribution to the argument about which force shapes American life the most. For two kinds of readers--those who know it's football and those who are about to find out." -- Provided by publisher

The Final Problem

"June, 1960. Rough weather at sea leaves a group of strangers stranded on the idyllic Greek island of Utakos, all guests of the only local hotel. Nothing could prepare them for what happens next: Edith Mander, a quiet British tourist, is found dead inside a beach cabana. What appears at first glance to be a clear suicide reveals possible signs of foul play to Ormond Basil, an out-of-work but still well-known actor who in his glory days portrayed the most celebrated detective of all time. Accustomed to seeing him display Sherlock Holmes's amazing powers of deduction on the big screen, the other guests believe that the actor is the best equipped to uncover the truth. But when a second body is discovered, there is not a doubt in Basil's mind: a murderer walks among them. What's more, the killer is staging each crime as a performance, leaving complex clues that bear an eerie resemblance to those found in the pages of Conan Doyle stories. This is a criminal who knows every trick in the book and is playing a deadly literary game. As the storm rages, Basil must become the genius detective he has only pretended to be." -- Publisher's website

Fear and Fury

On December 22, 1984, in a graffiti-covered New York City subway car, passengers looked on in horror as a white loner named Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teens, Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, at point-blank range. He then disappeared into a dark tunnel. After an intense manhunt, and his eventual surrender in New Hampshire, the man the tabloid media had dubbed the "Death Wish Vigilante" would become a celebrity and a hero to countless ordinary Americans who had been frustrated with the economic fallout of the Reagan 80s. Overnight, Goetz's young victims would become villains. Out of this dramatic moment would emerge an angry nation, in which Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and later Fox News Network stoked the fear and the fury of a stunning number of Americans. Drawing from never-before-seen archival materials, legal files, and more, Heather Ann Thompson narrates the Bernie Goetz Subway shootings and their decades-long reverberations, while deftly recovering the lives of the boys whom too many decided didn't matter. Fear and Fury is the remarkable account and a searing indictment of a crucial turning point in American history.

Every One Still Here

"What good is it to know what things are, what lies beneath the appearance of them? It is nothing until it is stated. It is nothing if it is not named. It is just blood, like you have never seen before. A young man studying anatomy looks at a cadaver. Flowers are found, left in bouquets, all over a museum. A mother dies, leaving a stain on the carpet: whether or not anyone acknowledges it, they know it’s there. The searching and clear-eyed stories in Every One Still Here are set in Ireland under British occupation, a place where the past, grief, and guilt thrum behind every surface and refuse to stay buried. Liadan Ní Chuinn is a debut writer of uncommon power, clarity, and precision, whose characters in Every One Still Here stay lodged within us long after we leave them." -- Amazon

Discipline

This novel follows Christine, a writer touring for her debut book, which draws on a past relationship with a former professor. While traveling, she reflects on questions of artistic creation, ethics, and personal responsibility through conversations with acquaintances, former partners, and strangers. Christine's reflections are disrupted when the professor who inspired her novel contacts her after a long period of silence, initiating a renewed exchange. When he invites her to visit him on a remote island off the coast of Maine, Christine is forced to confront issues of power, authorship, and control over personal narratives. The novel explores the complexities of intimacy, memory, and the boundaries between lived experience and artistic representation.

The Death and Life of Gentrification

"Japonica Brown-Saracino traces how a concept originally intended to describe the brick-and-mortar transformation of neighborhoods has come to characterize transformations that have little to do with cities. She describes how journalists, artists, filmmakers, novelists, and academics use gentrification as a symbolic device to mourn how everyday pleasures and forms of self-expression--from music to marijuana, kale, and tattoos--entered the domain of the elite. She weighs the implications of turning to gentrification as a tool to tell stories, entertain audiences, and communicate political messages. Relying on vivid examples, the book reveals how the term today expresses widespread ambivalence about rising economic inequality and unease with a variety of forms of social change. This book forces us to think about whether the wide-ranging way we use gentrification dilutes its meaning and stymies efforts to identify and resist urban displacement. Drawing on everything from film and television to novels and art, The Death and Life of Gentrification sheds critical light on the changing meaning of gentrification in contemporary life."-- Provided by publisher

Canticle

"Aleys is sixteen years old and unusual: stubborn, bright, and prone to religious visions. She and her only friend, Finn, a young scholar, have been learning Latin together in secret--but just as she thinks their connection might become something more, everything unravels. When her father promises her in marriage to a merchant she doesn't love, she runs away from home, finding shelter among the beguines, a fiercely independent community of religious women who refuse to answer to the Church. Among these hardworking and strong-willed women, Aleys glimpses for the first time the joys of belonging: a life of song, meaning, and friendship in the markets and along the canals of Bruges. But forces both mystical and political are at work. Illegal translations of scripture, the women's independence, and a sudden rash of miracles all draw the attention of an ambitious bishop--and bring Aleys and those around her into ever-increasing danger, a danger that will push Aleys to a new understanding of love and sacrifice."-- Provided by publisher

The Briars

Annie Heston leaves an abusive relationship and relocates to a small mountain town in the Pacific Northwest to work as a game warden. As she warns residents about a cougar sighting, Annie encounters resistance from members of the close-knit community but forms a connection with Daniel Barela, a reclusive local carpenter. When a young woman is found dead near Daniel's property, Annie assists the local sheriff in the investigation. Drawing on her training and knowledge of the wilderness, Annie becomes increasingly involved in uncovering the truth behind the crime. The novel combines a suspenseful investigation with an examination of isolation, trust, and community dynamics.

The Boundless Deep

"In this dazzling new biography, Richard Holmes, critically acclaimed author of The Age of Wonder, discovers in Young Tennyson an astonishingly magnetic and mercurial personality, a secretly expressive and highly emotional man haunted by the great intellectual and scientific issues of his time." -- Provided by publisher

The Life and Death of States

"Canonical theorists of sovereignty (Hobbes, Rousseau, and others) put the monopoly of power at the center of their definitions. These thinkers abstracted from western European experiences to universal norms. In the wake of their transformative contributions, states that did not fit the model appeared to be underdeveloped or deviant. Labels such as "provisional" or "irregular" rendered them irrelevant to theorizing and, worse, political problems that needed to be solved. One early "anomaly," says historian Natasha Wheatley, was the Habsburg Empire. Layered as it was with imperial, national, and regional sovereignty, its trajectory was not one of progress toward a unitary state. Instead, it encompassed compound polities, or states bundled together under experimental constitutional orders. Wheatley's aim in this book is to theorize from Central Europe to see how sovereignty can be produced in a complex world. In reconstructing this political and legal history, Wheatley treats Austria-Hungary as a crucible for modern legal theory. The serial remaking and eventual unmaking of imperial sovereigny in Central Europe showed how old-world dynastic conceptions of sovereignty were translated into abstract categories of modern legal thought. In so doing, she uncovers the irresolvable tensions and strategic silences in modern political theory: the presumed unity and timelessness of states. Eschewing explanations of "failure," she instead uncovers how the Central European experience crystallized legal questions that would arise again in the era of global decolonization, connecting the story of the end of empire to the birth of new nations throughout the twentieth century. In this respect, the work serves not only as a history of Central Europe but also a "prehistory" of the era of decolonization."-- Provided by publisher

Until the Last Gun Is Silent

"The untold story of the Black patriots-from soldiers in combat to peace protesters-who ended the Vietnam War and defended the soul of American democracy, from a pre-eminent civil rights historian and the award-winning author of Half American As the civil rights movement blazed through America, more than 300,000 Black troops were drafted and sent to fight in the Vietnam War. These soldiers, often from disadvantaged backgrounds and subjected to the brutalities of racism back home, found themselves thrust onto the frontlines of a war many saw as unjust. On the home front, Black antiwar activists faced another battle: Opposition to the Vietnam War, vilified by key allies in the media and government as anti-American, jeopardized the fight for civil rights. For Black Americans, the Vietnam War forced a generation to question what it truly meant to fight for justice. Award-winning civil rights historian Matthew F. Delmont weaves together the stories of two Black heroes of the Vietnam War era: Coretta Scott King, who bravely championed the antiwar cause-and eventually persuaded her husband to do the same-and Dwight "Skip" Johnson, a Medal of Honor recipient whose life ended tragically after returning from battle to his native Detroit. Together, these extraordinary accounts expose the contradictions of Black activism and military service during the Vietnam War. Through rich storytelling, Delmont offers a portrait of this period unlike any other, shedding light on a fractured civil rights movement, a generation of veterans failed by the country they served, and the valor of Black servicemen and peace advocates in the midst of it all. Vivid, revelatory, and meticulously researched, Until the Last Gun Is Silent: How a Civil Rights Icon and Vietnam War Hero Changed America is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the enduring legacy of Black military service, protest, and patriotism in the United States."-- Provided by publisher

Unspeakable Things

"In 2017, Brooke Nevils made a confidential HR complaint about one of the most powerful and familiar faces in media. Twenty-four hours later, the highest paid morning news anchor in history--[Matt Lauer]--was fired, stunning millions of Americans in one of the MeToo era's defining stories. Demanding answers--and the intimate details of the most personal and painful humiliation of her life--the press soon discovered her identity ... As MeToo unfolded, Brooke learned that messy stories like hers were far from the exception, and that nearly everything she'd believed about sexual harassment and assault--and how victims react to it--was wrong ... Through ... interviews with leading clinicians, forensic professionals, attorneys, and frontline researchers, [this book] challenges our understanding of consent, power, and the lingering, often misunderstood effects of trauma and shame. Despite its rarefied setting at the height of fame, power, and American media, Brooke's story serves as a textbook example of an all-too-common scenario that continues to devastate lives and enable abusers."-- Provided by publisher

Sheer

"It's 2015 and Maxine Thomas, the founder and creative director of the cult makeup company Reveal, has just been suspended by her own Board for a scandalous transgression. Housebound in her New York City apartment, where she awaits the verdict on her future, Max recounts her version of the events that have brought her to this moment. From her start as a precocious suburban child in the eighties to her decades as a workaholic visionary, Max proselytizes a sheer, dewy look-cosmetics through a female gaze-all while battling sexist investors, the whiplash of cultural change, and the mounting pressure to keep her sexuality a secret. But when Max's story catches up to her present, she must contend with the cost of true transparency. Told over nine intense days yet spanning a lifetime, Sheer is a gripping, incisive, and provocative tale of a complicated female vanguard's insatiable drive and the slippery ground between empowerment and abuse of power." -- Provided by publisher

Scavengers

"A cautious daughter and her eccentric, estranged mother set off into the Wild West in search of buried treasure - and a way back to each other - before they run out of patience, money, and options. Junior commodities analyst Bea Macon prizes security and control over adventure - especially after being raised by free spirit Christy, who has recently been living in Utah on Bea's dime. But when Bea is fired from her job after taking an uncharacteristic risk that backfires spectacularly, she books a one-way flight to Salt Lake City, where she plans to lay low and regroup before returning to Wall Street. Though she's not about to tell Christy exactly what happened back east, Bea quickly realizes that she isn't the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an eccentric antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.? Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother's wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea's entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she's onto something - and she's not the only one. When Bea realizes Christy is planning to rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the man she's been obsessively trading theories with online, she refuses to let her go alone. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined. Populated with unforgettable characters and set against one of the world's most oddly enrapturing landscapes, Scavengers is a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries, new beginnings, and the lengths to which we'll go to find, escape, and reinvent ourselves." -- Provided by publisher