ODY New Books Collection

A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century

"Before the 1960s, sex before marriage was frowned upon and pornography was difficult to get hold of. We are now much freer to do what we like--there has been a 'sexual revolution.' This must be a good thing, right? Wrong, argues Louise Perry. These changes have had many negative consequences, especially for girls and women. The main winners from a world of rough sex, hook-ups and freely available porn are a tiny minority of rich and powerful men. Women have been forced to adapt to these changes in ways that often harm them. Louise Perry carefully guides readers through the difficulties of sex in the 21st century. Her advice will be invaluable to all young women and men who may be feeling lost in a world where 'doing it' can sometimes seem dangerous or confusing."-- Amazon website

Parallel Lines

The fates of Sebastian and his therapist Martin, as well as radio producer Olivia, best friend Lucy, and husband Francis, are improbably yet inextricably linked in a novel about extinction and survival, inheritance and loss.

A Different Kind of Power

"What if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remarkable story of how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made political history and changed our assumptions of what a global leader can be. When Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister at age thirty-seven, the world took notice. But it was her compassionate yet powerful response to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, resulting in swift and sweeping gun control laws, that demonstrated her remarkable leadership. She guided her country through unprecedented challenges--a volcanic eruption, a major biosecurity breach, and a global pandemic--while advancing visionary new policies to address climate change, reduce child poverty, and secure historic international trade deals. She did all this while juggling first-time motherhood in the public eye. Ardern exemplifies a new kind of leadership -- proving that leaders can be caring, empathetic, and effective. She has become a global icon, and now she is ready to share her story, from the struggles to the surprises, including for the first time the full details of her decision to step down during her sixth year as Prime Minister. Through her personal experiences and reflections, Jacinda is a model for anyone who has ever doubted themselves, or has aspired to lead with compassion, conviction, and courage. A Different Kind of Power is more than a political memoir; it's an insight into how it feels to lead, ultimately asking: What if you, too, are capable of more than you ever imagined?"-- Provided by publisher

The Very Heart of It

"A collection of journal entries from the 80s and 90s, tracking a young, gay author's literary coming of age during the AIDS crisis."-- Provided by publisher

Theater Kid

"Before he was producing the musical hits of our generation, Jeffrey was just a kid coming to terms with his adoption, trying to understand his sexuality, and determined to escape his dysfunctional household in a poor neighborhood just outside Detroit. We see him find his voice through musical theater and move to New York, where he is determined to shed his past and make a name for himself on Broadway. But moving to the big city is never easy--especially not at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis--and Jeffrey learns to survive and thrive in the colorful and cutthroat world of commercial theatre. From his early days as an office assistant, to meeting Jonathan Larson and experiencing the triumph and tragedy of Rent, to working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights and Hamilton, Jeffrey completely pulls back the curtain on the joyous and gut-wrenching process of makingnew musicals, finding new audiences, and winning a Tony Award--all the while finding himself."-- Provided by publisher

Strangers in the Land

"From New Yorker editor and writer Michael Luo, a vivid, urgent history of two centuries of Chinese exclusion and the birth of anti-Asian feeling in America. In 1889, when the Supreme Court upheld the Chinese Exclusion Act-a measure barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States that remained in effect for more than fifty years-Justice Stephen Johnson Field characterized the Chinese as a people 'residing apart by themselves.' They were, Field concluded, 'strangers in the land.' Today, there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States, yet this label still hovers over Asian Americans. In Strangers in the Land, Luo traces anti-Asian feeling in America to the first wave of immigrants from China in the mid-nineteenth-century: laborers who traveled to California in search of gold and railroad work. Their communities almost immediately faced mobs of white vigilantes who drove them from their workplaces and homes. In his rich, character-driven history, Luo tells stories like that of Denis Kearney, the sandlot demagogue who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement, and of activists who fought back, like Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar and newspaperman Wong Chin Foo. After the halt on immigration in 1889, the Chinese-American community who remained struggled to survive and thrive on the margins of American life. In 1965, when LBJ's Immigration and Nationality Act forbade discrimination by national origin, America opened its doors wide to families like those of Luo's parents, but he finds that the centuries of exclusion of Chinese-Americans left a legacy: many Asians are still treated, and feel, like outsiders today. Strangers in the Land is a sweeping narrative of a forgotten chapter in American history, and a reminder that America's present reflects its exclusionary past." -- Provided by publisher

A Sharp Endless Need

"Star point guard Mack Morris's senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of her father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. On the court, Mack and Liv discover an exhilarating, game-winning chemistry; off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship that is out of bounds for their small Pennsylvania town in 2004, and especially, for Liv's conservative mother. As Mack's desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline, she is forced to reckon with the disconnects between her past and her future-and fight for the life she wants for herself, whether or not Liv will be on the court beside her."-- Provided by publisher

Mother Emanuel

"A sweeping history of one of the nation's most important African American churches and a profound story of grace and perseverance amidst the fight for racial justice-from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Kevin Sack."-- Provided by publisher

Medicine River

"A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture. From the mid-19th century to the late 1930s, tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their families to attend boarding schools that claimed to help create opportunity for these children to pursue professions outside their communities and otherwise "assimilate" into American life. In reality, these boarding schools--sponsored by the US Government but often run by various religious orders with little to no regulation--were an insidious attempt to destroy tribes, break up families, and stamp out the traditions of generations of Native people. Children were beaten for speaking their native languages, forced to complete menial tasks in terrible conditions, and utterly deprived of love and affection. Ojibwe journalist Mary Pember's mother was forced to attend one of these institutions--a seminary in Wisconsin, and the impacts of her experience have cast a pall over Mary's own childhood, and her relationship with her mother. Highlighting both her mother's experience and the experiences of countless other students at such schools, their families, and their children, Medicine River paints a stark portrait of communities still reckoning with the legacy of acculturation that has affected generations of Native communities. Through searing interviews and assiduous historical reporting, Pember traces the evolution and continued rebirth of a culture whose country has been seemingly intent upon destroying it."-- Provided by publisher

Margaret Fuller

"Transcendentalist, journalist, feminist, activist, public intellectual, war correspondent, poet: Margaret Fuller's achievement in her short life was as diverse, wide-ranging, and radical as her multi-generic writings. Now, at long last, this pioneering writer joins Library of America with the most comprehensive and most authoritative version of her writings ever published. Here are her two best-known books: Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, an account of her travels to the Great Lakes, a plea for better treatment of the American Indian peoples, and a sketchbook of Fuller's thought; and Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the foundational document of American feminism and the first major work on women's rights since Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman fifty-three years earlier. Joining them are a generous selection of Fuller's published essays and journalism, including "American Literature" and her reviews and columns for the New York Tribune, as well as her war correspondence from besieged Rome in 1849; unpublished writings and selections from Fuller's journals, many previously unknown and newly transcribed for this volume; and a selection of Fuller's letters, including three newly translated from the original Italian."-- Provided by publisher

Lower than the Angels

"A groundbreaking history of sexual emotion, sexual activity, gender relations, marriage and the family--and how Christianity has interacted with this panorama of human concerns. Few matters produce more public interest and public anxiety than sex and religion. Much of the political contention and division in societies across the world centres on sexual topics, and one-third of the global population is Christian in background or outlook. The issue goes to the heart of present-day religion. This book seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding through telling a three-thousand-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender, and the family. The message of Lower than the Angels is simple, necessary and timely: to pay attention to the complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity. The reader can decide from the story told here whether there is a single Christian theology of sex, or many contending voices in a symphony that is not at all complete. Oxford's Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church introduces an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity's deepest desires, fears and hopes."-- Provided by publisher

Little Bosses Everywhere

"A groundbreaking work of history and reportage that unveils the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing, from the shadowy cabals at the top to the strivers at the bottom, whose deferred dreams churn a massive money-making scam that has remade American society. Multilevel marketing companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the ultimate business opportunity: the chance to be your own boss. In exchange for peddling their wares, they offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and--most precious of all--financial freedom. If, that is, you're willing to shell out for expensive products, recruit everyone you know to buy them, and make them recruit everyone they know to do the same--thus creating the 'multiple levels' of multilevel marketing, or MLM. Despite overwhelming evidence that multilevel marketing causes most of its participants to lose their money, and that many MLM companies are pyramid schemes, the industry's dubious origins, inextricably tied to well-known ideological figures like Ronald Reagan, have escaped public scrutiny. Behind the scenes of American life, MLM has slithered in the wake of every economic crisis of the last century, from the Depression to the pandemic, ensnaring laid-off workers, stay-at-home moms, teachers, nurses--anyone who has been left behind by inequality. In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny post-war California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the suburbs of Michigan and North Carolina, where MLM bought its political protection, to the stadium-sized conventions where top sellers today preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has been endorsed by multiple American presidents, has its own Congressional caucus, and enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffet, and Donald Trump. Along the way, Read delves into the heartbreaking stories of those enmeshed in the majority-female industry: a veteran in Florida searching for healing; a young mom in Texas struggling to feed her children; a waitress scraping by in Brooklyn. A wild trip down an endless rabbit hole of greed and exploitation, Little Bosses Everywhere exposes multilevel marketing as American capitalism's stealthiest PR campaign: a cunning right-wing political project that has shaped nearly everything about how we live."-- Provided by publisher

I'll
Tell You when I'm
Home

"After a decade of yearning for parenthood, years marked by miscarriage after miscarriage, Hala Alyan makes the decision to use a surrogate. In this charged time, she turns to the archetype of the waiting woman -- the Scheherazade who tells stories to ensure another dawn -- to confront her own narratives of motherhood, love, and inheritance. As her baby grows in the body of another woman, in another country, Hala finds her own life unraveling -- a husband who wants to leave; the cost of past traumas and addictions threatening to resurface; the city of her youth, Beirut, on the brink of crisis. She turns to family stories and communal myths: of grandmothers mapping their lives through Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon; of eradicated villages and invading armies; of places of refuge that proved only temporary; of men that left and women that stayed; of the contradictions of her own Midwestern childhood, and adolescence in various Arab cities. Meanwhile, as the baby grows from the size of a poppyseed to a grain of rice, then a lime, and beyond, Hala gathers the stories that are her legacy, setting down the ones that confine, holding close those that liberate. It is emotionally charged, painstaking work, but now the stakes are higher: how to honor ancestors and future generations alike in the midst of displacement? How to impart love for those who are no longer here, for places one can no longer touch?" -- Provided by publisher

Heart, Be at Peace

"A novel about small-town Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them. First United States edition."-- Provided by publisher

The Gunfighters

"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Rich and Forget the Alamo comes an epic reconsideration of the time and place that spawned America's most legendary gunfighters, from Jesse James and Billy the Kid to Butch and Sundance. The "Wild West" gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there's much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas. Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north. The Colt revolver first caught on with the Texas Rangers. Southern dueling culture transformed into something wilder and less organized in the Lone Star State. The collapse of the Confederacy and the presence of a thin veneer of Northern occupiers turned the heat up further. And the explosion in the cattle business after the war took that violence and pumped it out from Texas across the whole of the West. The stampede of longhorn cattle brought with it an assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelance lawmen who carried a trigger-happy honor culture into a widening gyre, a veritable blood meridian. When the first newspapermen and audiences discovered what good copy this all was, the flywheel of mythmaking started spinning. It's never stopped. The Gunfighters brilliantly sifts the lies from the truth, giving both elements their due. And the truth is sufficiently wild for any but the most unhinged tastes. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair-good, bad, and ugly. Like all great stories, this one has a rousing end-as the railroads and the settlers close off the open spaces for good, the last of the breed, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, really do get on a boat for South America, ending their era in a blaze of glory. Burrough knits these histories together into something much deeper and more provocative than simply the sum of its parts. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story."-- Provided by publisher

Finding Margaret Fuller

Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated Sage of Concord, to meet his coterie of enlightened friends. There she becomes "the radiant genius and fiery heart" of the Transcendentalists, a role model to a young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne and the scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he ventures out to Walden Pond . . . and a muse to Emerson. But Margaret craves more than poetry and interpersonal drama, and her restless soul needs new challenges and adventures. And so she charts a singular course against a backdrop of dizzying historical drama: From Boston, where she hosts a salon for students like Elizabeth Cady Stanton; to the editorial meetings of The Dial magazine, where she hones her pen as its co-founder; to Harvard's library, where she is the first woman permitted entry; to the gritty New York streets where she spars with Edgar Allan Poe and reports on Frederick Douglass. Margaret defies conventions time and again as an activist for women and an advocate for humanity, earning admirers and critics alike. When the legendary editor Horace Greeley offers her an assignment in Europe, Margaret again makes history as the first female foreign news correspondent, mingling with luminaries like Frédéric Chopin, William Wordsworth, George Sand and more. But it is in Rome that she finds a world of passion, romance, and revolution, taking a Roman count as a lover--and sparking an international scandal. Evolving yet again into the roles of mother and countess, Margaret enters the fight for Italy's unification. Provided by publisher

Fever Beach

"'The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Falls, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he'd take him there after finishing an errand.' Thus begins Fever Beach, with an errand that leads--in pure Hiaasen-style--into the depths of Florida at its most Floridian: a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed, and corruption. Figgo, it turns out, is the only hate-monger ever to be kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too dumb and incompetent. On January 6, 2021 he thought he was defacing a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, but he wound up spreading feces all over a statue of James Zacharia George, a Civil War Confederate war leader. Figgo's already messy life is about to get more complicated, thanks to two formidable adversaries. Viva Morales is a newly transplanted Floridian, a clever woman recently taken to the cleaners by her ex-husband, now working at the Mink Foundation, a supposedly philanthropical organization, and renting a room in Figgo's apartment because there's no place else she can afford. Twilly Spree has an anger management problem, especially when it comes to those who deface the environment, and way too many inherited millions of dollars. He's living alone a year after his dog died, two years after he sank a city councilman's party barge, and three years after his divorce. Viva and Twilly are plunged into a mystery--involving dark money and darker motives--they are determined to solve, and become entangled in a world populated by some of Hiaasen's most outrageous characters: Claude and Electra Mink--billionaire philanthropists with way too much plastic surgery and a secret right-wing agenda--and Congressman Clure Boyette--who dreams of being Florida's (and maybe America's) most important politician. The only things standing in his way are his love for hookers and young girls, and his total lack of intelligence. We meet Noel Kristianson--a Scandinavian agnostic injured when Figgo thinks he's a Jewish threat to humanity and runs him over with his car; Jonus Onus--Figgo's partner in white power idiocy; and many, many more. Hiaasen ties them all together and delivers them to their appropriate fates, in his wildest and most entertaining novel to date."-- Provided by publisher

The Family Dynamic

"Is there a secret sauce behind those rare families that boast multiple highly successful children? Award-winning New York Times journalist weaves story with science in pursuit of answers. Acclaimed New York Times investigative journalist Susan Dominus profiles six families with several exceptionally accomplished children in order to tease apart the various factors that might have led to their success, including inherited tendencies. She starts with the iconic Brontë sisters, whose remarkable literary success inspired endless speculation about the reason for so much talent under one roof. Dominus, herself the mother of twin teenagers, then moves to the present moment, relating the fascinating trajectories of families from diverse cultural, racial and socio-economic backgrounds, including young parents from China who fled the one-child policy to open a Chinese restaurant in Appalachia and sent four children to elite colleges and careers that give back in technology and medicine; the Groff family, whose claim to fame is not just an award-winning novelist but an Olympic athlete and a notable entrepreneur; and the Holifields, raised in the Jim Crow South and boasting two powerful attorneys, both Harvard law school graduates, and a cardiologist, all three influential, in their own ways, in civil rights. Woven into these and other inspiring stories is an account of centuries of scientific research into the question of nature vs. nurture in predicting outcomes."-- Provided by publisher

Eternal Summer

"Set in a German spa town wracked by climate change, this intense, enthralling debut explores trust, abuse, and solidarity through the unexpected bond between two women. When Iris took over the family hotel from her grandfather, Bad Heim was still a popular spa town. But now fierce forest fires rage in the area, spewing smoke into the air. The summers are dry and hot and never seem to end. Guests have become a rare sight. But suddenly, a young mother shows up with her small daughter and asks for a room. Something doesn't seem right about her. Does she need help? Or even pose a threat? Franziska Gänsler's debut conjures up the heat of the fires, the ashes falling on skin, and the all-pervading smell of smoke. Yet you will want to stay with these women in this inhospitable place as they draw closer together and prepare to fight for their freedom."-- Provided by publisher

El Dorado Drive

"When Harper moves in with her sister Pam, she's surprised to find Pam doing so well financially after her messy divorce. After all, Pam's ex-husband wiped their bank accounts, even stole from their kids. But Pam managed to find her way back. Thanks to the Wheel. Twice a month, the women of the Wheel meet. New members bring cash to the party that is pooled together and then gifted to one lucky member. It's all about giving back. Lifting each other up. As women should. As they must. But when Harper is invited, with the promise of an end to her financial burdens, the sisters inadvertently unleash a darkness lurking within the group. If they're not careful, it might just get them killed."-- Provided by publisher