ODY New Books Collection

Lincoln's
Peace

"We set out on the James River, March 25, 1865, aboard the paddle steamboat the River Queen. President Lincoln is on his way to General Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia, and he's decided he won't return to Washington until he's witnessed, or perhaps even orchestrated, the end of the Civil War. Now, it turns out, more than a century and a half later, historians are still searching for that end. Was it April 9th, at Appomattox, as conventional wisdom holds, where Lee surrendered to Grant in Wilmer McLean's parlor? Or was it ten weeks afterward, in Galveston, where a federal commander proclaimed "Juneteenth" the end of slavery? Or perhaps in August of 1866, when President Andrew Johnson simply declared "the insurrection is at an end"? That the answer was elusive was baffling even to a historian of the stature of Michael Vorenberg, whose work served as the principal source of Spielberg's Lincoln. He was inspired to write this groundbreaking book, finding its title in the peace Lincoln hoped for but could not make before his assassination. A peace that required not one but many endings, as Vorenberg discovers in these pages, the most important of which came well over a year after Lincoln's untimely death. To say how a war ends is to suggest how it should be remembered, and Vorenberg's search is not just for the Civil War's endpoint but for its true nature and legacy, so essential to American identity. It's also a quest, in our age of "forever wars," to understand whether the U.S.'s interminable conflicts of the current era have a precedent in the Civil War-and whether, in a sense, wars ever end at all, or merely wax and wane."-- Provided by publisher

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus

"A witty, warm and brilliantly told debut that is at once a love story, a story of female friendship and motherhood, and an irresistible mystery surrounding an extraordinary British family. Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she'll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father's--now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox--lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox's centuries-old estate with his enveloping, intriguing family, Pen begins to unravel her parents' secret and to fall in love for the first time... Her best friend, Alice, an aspiring actor, is starring in a university production and making the most of the feminine power she wields--until a tryst with her tutor threatens to spin out of control. As Pen experiences the sharp shock of adulthood, she uncovers the truth about her own family and comes to rely on herself for the first time in her life. A rich and rewarding novel of campus life, of sexual awakening, and ultimately, of the many ways women can become mothers in this world, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus asks to what extent we need to look back in order to move forward." -- Provided by publisher

Heartwood

"In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie's disappearance may not be accidental." -- Provided by publisher

The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits

"Cassie and Zoe Griffin were born just a year apart, but the sisters could not have been more different. Zoe, beautiful and charming, grew up with a burning desire for fame, making up for a lack of natural talent with hard work and determination. Cassie, though, had a gift. She was uncomfortable in her plus-sized body and preferred to be in the shadows, she was a musical prodigy. On the threshold of adulthood, the sisters are discovered by a record label and become the Griffin Sisters, a band that quickly skyrockets to fame, reaching the heights of pop stardom: MTV, VH1, the Billboard charts, and every marker of a dream come true. Cassie's musical gifts make her the voice of a generation and while the spotlight tests her spirit, it also opens her heart to possibilities for connection she has never considered. Zoe gets everything she thought she wanted: international fame and the paparazzi, the couture-and the man-that go with it. But twenty years later, everything has changed. Cassie lives in seclusion in Alaska. Zoe has abandoned her music dreams for suburban motherhood in New Jersey. The Griffin Sisters are long gone, and the devil's bargain of celebrity has exacted a high price that drives the sisters apart and nearly destroys them both. And yet Zoe's teenage daughter Cherry has inherited her family's talent and stage presence, and will stop at nothing to achieve the very dream of pop stardom her mother has warned her against-opening the wounds of their shared history in the process. Both sisters must face the consequences of choices from the past: the ones they made and the ones the music industry made for them. Can the mistakes of the past be redeemed, and can broken bonds be repaired? In this stirring and soul-bearing novel, Jennifer Weiner brings to life the heartache, joy, and glory of the glamorous but shattering Golden Age of pop music, and a celebrates the power of love and forgiveness, even after the music stops."-- Provided by publisher

Ghosts of Iron Mountain

A compelling work of investigative journalism that explores the surprising origins and hidden ramifications of an epic late 1960s hoax, perpetrated by cultural luminaries, including Victor Navasky and E.L. Doctorow. For readers curious about the surprising connections between John F. Kennedy, Oliver Stone, Timothy McVeigh, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump.

A Fractured Liberation

"After liberation in 1945, Koreans erupted with hopes for reform that had been bottled up during forty years of Japanese imperial rule. Arguing that permanent North-South division was far from inevitable, Kornel Chang explores the movement for a unified Korean social democracy and its suppression by anticommunist US military authorities."-- Provided by publisher

The Float Test

"The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can't write, maybe because she's lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters' friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever--if only they could trust each other. A family story is, of course, only as honest as the person telling it. This family story in particular is fraught with secrets about kids and sex and jobs and why the Kenner matriarch had a gun in her underwear drawer. The biggest secret of all though is the secret of what happened between Jude and Fred to create such a rift between the two once-close middle sisters. Over the course of a sweltering Florida summer, the Kenner siblings will revisit what it means to be a family and, if they are smart and kind and lucky, come out on the other side better for having each other. A rich exploration of family, ambition, secrets, and love, The Float Test is an elegant and gripping testament to the power that family has to both nurture and destroy us from a critically acclaimed writer working at the top of her craft."-- Provided by publisher

Children of Radium

"In the tradition of When Time Stopped and The Hare with Amber Eyes, this extraordinary family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author's great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist specializing in radioactive household products who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis. When novelist and poet Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their heroic escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. Instead, what he found in his great-grandfather's voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. "I confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error. I betrayed myself, my most sacred principles," he wrote. "I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience." Siegfried Merzbacher was a German-Jewish chemist living in Oranienburg, a small town north of Berlin, where he developed various household items, including a radioactive toothpaste called Doramad. But then he was asked by the government to work on products with a strong military connection-first he made and tested gas-mask filters, and then he was invited to establish a chemical weapons laboratory. Between 1933 and 1935, he was a Jewish chemist making chemical weapons for the Nazis. While he and his nuclear family escaped safely to Turkey before the war, Siegfried never got over his complicity, particularly after learning that members of his extended family were murdered in Auschwitz. Armed only with his great-grandfather's rambling, 2,000-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg-a place where hundreds of unexploded bombs remain hidden in the irradiated soil-to reckon with the remarkable, unsettling legacy of his family's past."-- Provided by publisher

Careless People

"From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this ... memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a ... narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this ... memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite. Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg's reaction when he learned of Facebook's role in Trump's election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to "lean in." -- Dust jacket

American Anarchy

"In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, anarchists were heroes to many working-class immigrants. But to many others, anarchism was a terrifyingly foreign ideology. Determined to crush it, government officials launched a decades-long 'war on anarchy,' a brutal program of spying, censorship, and deportation that set the foundations of the modern surveillance state. The lawyers who came to the anarchists' defense advanced groundbreaking arguments for free speech and due process, inspiring the emergence of the civil liberties movement. American Anarchy tells the gripping tale of the anarchists, their allies, and their enemies, showing how their battles over freedom and power still shape our public life." -- Dust jacket flap

When the City Stopped

"This book tells the story of COVID-19 in New York City through oral histories, poetry and first-person narratives. Emphasizing work, suffering, and coping, the book covers the winter of 2020 to the summer of 2023 and presents the words of New Yorkers from all five boroughs."-- Provided by publisher

Paradise Logic

"It was decreed from the moment she was born. Twenty-three-year-old Reality Kahn would embark on a quest so great, so bold. She would become the greatest girlfriend of all time. She would be a zine maker, an aspiring notary, the greatest waterslide commercial actress on the Eastern Seaboard. She would receive messages from the beyond in the form of advice from the esteemed and ancient ladies magazine, Girlfriend Weekly. When she attends a party in Gowanus at a punk venue known as 'Paradise,' Reality meets Ariel, who will become her boyfriend. She bravely works for his everlasting affection and joins a clinical trial created by Dr. Zweig Altmann to help her become a more perfect girlfriend. She stars in a new commercial. She learns how to become an indelible host. But Reality will also learn that sheer will and determination, and a very open heart, are not always enough to make true love manifest. At turns laugh-out-loud funny, tragic, and jarring, Reality's quest grows ever complicated as the men in her life: Ariel, her waterpark commercial agent Jethro, and Dr. Altmann himself prove treacherous. Paradise Logic is a thrilling, psychosexual breakdown of our obsession with authentic true love, asking whether that is even possible in a patriarchal world, and announces Sophie Kemp as a wholly original, transformative, and brilliant new voice in fiction."-- Publisher's website

No Trade Is Free

"This book is a wake up call to our politicians, thought leaders, but most importantly, everyday Americans. It presents the case against the policies that have weakened America and left our families and communities behind. It argues for a worker-focused trade policy. It tells the story of our fight for every American job and how for the first time, a US administration took on China. But most importantly, it is a guide to the new world economy--one which will require a worker-focused trade policy." -- Provided by the publisher.

Mother Media

"A history of mediated mothering during the last 40 years, with a focus on the psycho-social panics surrounding the inclusion of technology in childcare."-- Provided by publisher

I Leave It up to You

"From the award-winning author of Flux comes a dazzling novel about love, family, and the art of sushi that asks: What if you could return to the point of a fateful choice, wiser than before, and find the courage to forge a new path?"-- Provided by publisher

Darkenbloom

It's 1989, and in a small town on the Austria-Hungary border, nobody talks about the war; the older residents pretend not to remember, and the younger ones are too busy making plans to leave. The walls are thin, the curtains twitch, there is a face at every window, and everyone knows what they are not supposed to say. But as thousands of East German refugees mass at the border, it seems that the past is knocking on Darkenbloom's door. Still, though, nobody talks about the war. Until a mysterious visitor shows up asking questions. Until townspeople start receiving threatening letters and even disappearing. Until a body is found.

Crumb

"The first biography of Robert Crumb--one of the most profound and influential artists of the 20th century--whose iconic, radically frank and meticulously rendered cartoons and comics inspired generations of readers and cartoonists, from Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel."-- Provided by publisher

Christian Supremacy

"A panoramic cultural and legal history that traces the roots of antisemitism and racism to early Christian theology. Since the earliest days of Christianity, theologians expressed pervasive anxiety about Jews as equal members of society and, with European expansion in the early modern period, that anxiety extended to people of color. This troubling legacy still haunts us today. Christian Supremacy demonstrates how theological and legal frameworks created by the church centuries ago laid the seeds of antisemitism and anti-Black racism, and reveals why Christian identity lies at the heart of the world's violent white supremacy movements. In a powerful historical narrative spanning nearly two millennia, Magda Teter describes how Christian theology of late antiquity cast Jews as "children born in slavery," and how the supposed theological inferiority of Jews became inscribed into law, creating tangible structures that reinforced a sense of Christian domination and superiority. With the dawn of European colonialism, a distinct brand of European Christian supremacy found expression in the legally sanctioned enslavement and exploitation of people of color, later taking the form of white Christian supremacy in the New World. Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence ranging from the theological and legal to the philosophical and artistic, Christian Supremacy is a profound reckoning with history that traces the roots of the modern rejection of Jewish and Black equality to an enduring Christian heritage of exclusion, intolerance, and persecution."-- Provided by publisher

After the Nazis

"After World War II a mood of despair and impotence pervaded the arts in West Germany. The culture and institutions of the Third Reich were abruptly dismissed, yet there was no immediate return to the Weimar period's progressive ideals. In this moment of cultural stasis, how could West Germany's artists free themselves from their experiences of Nazism? Moving from 1945 to reunification, Michael H. Kater explores West German culture as it emerged from the darkness of the Third Reich. Examining periods of denial and complacency as well as attempts to reckon with the past, he shows how all postwar culture was touched by the vestiges of National Socialism. From the literature of Günter Grass to the happenings of Joseph Beuys and Karlheinz Stockhausen's innovations in electronic music, Kater shows how it was only through the reinvigoration of the cultural scene that West Germany could contend with its past - and eventually allow democracy to reemerge."-- Provided by publisher

Artificial Condition

It has a dark past - one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself Murderbot. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a research transport vessal named ART (you don't want to know what the A stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks ...