ODY New Books Collection

Red Scare

"Red Scare tells the story of McCarthyism and the Red Scare--based in part on newly declassified sources--by an award-winning writer of history and New York Times reporter."-- Provided by publisher

The Pardon

Examines the contentious events surrounding President Ford's decision to pardon Nixon, featuring key players such as Alexander Haig and Benton Becker, and explores its long-term impact on American politics and the presidency, arguing that this was not a necessary act of healing, but rather an unwise gift to an undeserving recipient.

How the World Eats

"How we live is shaped by how we eat. You can see this in the vastly different approaches to growing, preparing and eating food around the world, such as the hunter-gatherer Hadza in Tanzania whose sustainable lifestyle is under threat in a crowded planet, or Western societies whose food is farmed or bred in vast intensive enterprises. And most of us now rely on a complex global food web of production, distribution, consumption and disposal, which is now contending with unprecedented challenges. The need for a better understanding of how we feed ourselves has never been more urgent. In this wide-ranging and definitive book, philosopher Julian Baggini expertly delves into the best and worst food practises in a huge array of different societies, past and present. His exploration takes him from cutting-edge technologies, such as new farming methods, cultured meat, GM and astronaut food, to the ethics and health of ultra processed food and aquaculture, as he takes a forensic look at the effectiveness of our food governance, the difficulties of food wastage and the effects of commodification. Extracting essential principles to guide how we eat in the future, How the World Eats advocates for a pluralistic, humane, resourceful and equitable global food philosophy, so we can build a food system fit for the twenty-first century and beyond." -- Dust jacket

Heaven and Hell

"In a remote part of Iceland, a young man joins a cod-fishing crew, but when a tragedy occurs at sea, he's appalled by his fellow fishermen's cruel indifference. Lost, broken by his experiences, he leaves the settlement in secret, his only purpose to return a book to a blind old sea captain who lives in a town beyond the mountains--and when he arrives, he finds that he isn't alone in his solitude: welcomed into a warm circle of outcasts, he begins to see the world anew. Heaven and Hell navigates the depths of despair to celebrate the redemptive power of friendship. Set at the turn of the twentieth century, it is a reading experience as intense as the forces of the Icelandic landscape themselves."-- Provided by publisher

Bright Circle

"A group biography of five women who played path-breaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society 'to answer the great questions' of special importance to women: 'What are we born to do? How shall we do it?' The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of Bright Circle, a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism--a submerged counternarrative--that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women. Bright Circle is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism: to help us see the movement as a far more collaborative and interactive project between women and men than is commonly understood. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller as they developed crucial ideas about the self, nature, and feeling even as they pushed their male counterparts to consider the rights of enslaved people of color and women. Many ideas once considered original to Emerson and Thoreau are shown to have originated with women who had little opportunity of publicly expressing them. Together, the five women of Bright Circle helped form the foundations of American feminism." -- Publisher's description

The Trouble of Color

"A child of the civil rights era, Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But in Jones's first semester of college, a Black Studies classmate challenged her right to speak. Suspicious of the color of her skin and the texture of her hair, he confronted her with a question that inspired a lifetime of introspection: "Who do you think you are?" Now a prizewinning scholar of Black history, Jones delves into her own family's past for answers, only to find a story that archives alone can't tell, a story of race in America that takes us beyond slavery, Jim Crow, and civil rights. Ever since her great-great-great-grandmother Nancy emerged from bondage in 1865 determined to raise a free family, skin color has determined Jones's ancestors' lives. But color and race are not the same, and through her family's story, Jones discovers the uneven, unpredictable relationship between the two. Drawing readers along the shifting and jagged path of America's color line, The Trouble of Color is a lyrical, deeply felt meditation on the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and family."-- Provided by publisher

Sucker Punch

"The long-awaited follow-up from one of the most original and hilarious voices writing today. Scaachi Koul's first book was a collection of raw, perceptive, and hilarious essays reckoning with the issues of race, body image, love, friendship, and growing up the daughter of immigrants. When the time came to start writing her next book, Scaachi assumed she'd be updating her story with essays about her elaborate four-day wedding, settling down to domestic bliss, and continuing her never-ending arguments with her parents. Instead, the Covid pandemic hit, the world went into lockdown, Scaachi's marriage fell apart, she lost her job, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Sucker Punch is about what happens when the life you thought you'd be living radically changes course, everything you thought you knew about the world and yourself has tilted on its axis, and you have to start forging a new path forward. Scaachi employs her signature humor and fierce intelligence to interrogate her previous belief that fighting is the most effective tool for progress. She examines the fights she's had--with her parents, her ex-husband, her friends, online strangers, and herself--all in an attempt to understand when a fight is worth having, and when it's better to walk away"-- Provided by publisher

The Passenger Seat

"A searing examination of male friendship and the broader social implications of masculinity in an age of toxic loneliness. In a small town in North America, two boys, or men, embark on a vaguely charted road trip through the northern wilderness with little more than canned food and secondhand camping gear--and the rifle they buy on their way out of town for reasons neither seems able to articulate. The more they handle the gun, and the farther they get from their parents' houses and their peers, girlfriends and online gaming, the grim future that awaits them in their nowhere town, the less their actions--and the games, literal and metaphorical, they play--are bound by the usual constraints. When Adam decides to harass a young couple they meet on the highway, the outcome is irreversible, and leads them even further down a road from which there's no turning back."-- Provided by publisher

Abundance

"To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don't have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven't built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget--if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that's clicking into focus now has been building for decades--because we haven't been building enough. Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear's villains. Rather, one generation's solutions have become the next gener­ation's problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished. Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and pre­serves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel."-- Provided by publisher

Black Woods, Blue Sky

"Birdie splits her days between caring for her six-year-old daughter, Emaleen, and working as a waitress at a roadside lodge in Alaska. But this is not the life she'd dreamed of as a child. Back then, she had fantasized about being free in the world of nature. Arthur is a soft-spoken recluse--adopted as a boy under mysterious circumstances by a local couple who raised him as their own but understood that he could never fully fit into their world. He calls the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River his home and lives completely off the grid, appearing in the town at random intervals. But when he shows up at Birdie's lodge one day and she serves him honey and tea, the two form a friendship, and as they eventually fall in love Birdie begins to imagine a different life for herself and her daughter. When Birdie and Emaleen move to Arthur's remote cabin life initially seems idyllic; they spend their days catching fish, picking berries, and playing games in the sunshine. But as the days shorten Birdie begins to realize that the truth of Arthur's life is much more complicated and mysterious than she understood, and that the reality of who he is may be putting her and her daughter's life in danger."-- Provided by publisher

A Gorgeous Excitement

"The summer of 1986 in New York City starts off with a model's face getting slashed after rejecting her landlord's advances. It ends with a young woman's half naked body discovered in Central Park, murdered after a night of "rough sex." Nina Jacobs is 18, working a series of boring temp jobs, trying to lose her virginity before she leaves for college at the end of the summer, while also trying to stay out of the way of her mother, who spends her days in bed or criticizing Nina, or often both. And developing a burgeoning cocaine habit. Could the magnetic IT boy from the bar they hang out at that caters to the Upper East Side private school rich kid set, be the one who can help her achieve both her goals this summer?"-- Provided by publisher

Why Nothing Works

"America was once a country that could do big things - building the world's greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, Social Security, NASA, and more. But today, on issues that touch us each and every day, from housing to clean energy to high-speed rail, we feel stuck, unable to move the needle, ruled by a vetocracy that uses its power to stifle progress. Marc Dunkelman's provocative analysis of the architecture and use of power investigates how we moved from a can-do culture to one in which new red tape is added to a world already hampered by it-and how we can find our way back. While Progressives blame the right, it's actually Progressive reforms that curtail anyone who wields power - from bureaucrats and politicians to financiers, and corporate executives - from getting things done. Guardrails placed around power brokers so that they don't interfere with our individual autonomy or oppress us with its coercive authority have worked all too well - so well that government has been rendered incompetent, stifling the very tool needed to fight for justice and equality. As Americans confront massive crises like climate change, rising healthcare costs, crumbling infrastructure, and failing schools, Americans need quick and decisive action. In this book Dunkelman shows how progressives can rediscover their roots, end gridlock, and do the crucial work of serving the people."-- Provided by publisher

The Art of the SNL Portrait

"The electric spirit of Saturday Night Live as captured by longtime resident photographer Mary Ellen Matthews. Andy Samberg in a giant martini glass. Billie Eilish peeking out of a pile of snow. Kevin Hart writing his own cue cards. Paul Rudd as Paul McCartney. Sarah Silverman dusting the NBC marquee. Alec Baldwin as the Godfather. These are just a few examples of Matthews's bold, dynamic, and playful celebrity portraits that for over two decades have artfully highlighted the hosts and musical guests who help bring the show to life. Week after week, photographer Mary Ellen Matthews makes magic happen on Saturday Night Live with her inventive, irreverent, and truly original photography for the "bumpers"--portraits of the host or musical guest that transition the show to and from commercial breaks. Published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of SNL and exquisitely designed by Pentagram, this book is the first collection of Mary Ellen's remarkable body of work as well as a celebration of America's longest-running comedy TV show".-- Publisher description

How to Be Avant-Garde

"Art has poisoned our life," proclaimed Dutch artist and De Stijl cofounder Theo van Doesburg. Reacting to the tumultuous crises of the twentieth century, especially the horrors of World War I, avant-garde artists and writers sought to destroy art by transforming it into the substance of everyday life. Following the evolution of these revolutionary groups, How to Be Avant-Garde charts its pioneers and radical ideas. From Paris to New York, from Zurich to Moscow and Berlin, avant-gardists challenged the confines of the definition of art along with the confines of the canvas itself. Art historian Morgan Falconer starts with the dynamic Futurist founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose manifesto extolling speed, destruction, and modernity seeded avant-gardes across Europe. In turn, Dadaists Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings sought to replace art with political cabaret, and the Surrealists tried to exchange it for tools to plumb the unconscious. He guides us through the Russian Constructivists with their adventures in advertising and utopianism and then De Stijl with the geometric abstractions of Piet Mondrian. The Bauhaus broke more boundaries, transmuting art into architecture and design. Finally, the Situationists swapped art for politics, with many of their ideas inspiring the 1968 Paris student protests. How to Be Avant-Garde is a journey through the interlocking networks of these richly creative lives with their visions of a better world, their sometimes sympathetic but often strange and turbulent conversations, and their objects and writings that defied categorization.

A Fearless Eye

"A captivating volume that transports us onto the San Francisco streets of the 1970s through the black-and-white images of a previously unknown master of 20th-century photography, Barbara Ramos."-- Provided by publisher

How to Sleep at Night

"Ethan and Gabe's marriage is tested when Ethan announces his congressional run as a Republican, while Nicole rekindles a romance with Ethan's sister Kate, a political reporter whose life spirals as family and career collide."-- Provided by publisher

The Riveter

Follows Josiah Chang, a Chinese Canadian who, barred from military service, works in a shipyard and falls in love with Poppy; as their romance blossoms, Josiah seeks to prove his worth to her family and himself, leading him to enlist in Toronto amid the changing dynamics of wartime Canada.

Victorian Psycho

"In Grim Wolds, England, Winifred Notty takes on the role of governess at Ensor House, where she must navigate the twisted dynamics of the dysfunctional Pounds family while suppressing her own violent past; as Christmas approaches, she plans sinister gifts for her charges, revealing her true nature."-- Provided by publishers

I'm
That Girl

This memoir from the two-time Olympian gymnast chronicles her journey to the awards podium while overcoming racism, childhood trauma and devastating setbacks, highlighting the importance of family support and the resilience of the human spirit​.

Three Days in June

"Gail Baines is long divorced from her husband, Max, and not especially close to her grown daughter, Debbie. Today is the day before Debbie's wedding. To start, Gail loses her job--or quits, depending who you ask. Then, Max arrives unannounced on Gail's doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay and without even a suit in which to walk their daughter down the aisle. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband-to-be. It will not only throw the wedding itself into question but also send Gail back into her past and how her own relationship fell apart. Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of her powers."-- Provided by publisher