ODY New Books Collection

Israel

"Omer Bartov was born in a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become a leading scholar of the Holocaust before turning his attention to his native country. In a series of widely read essays, he has argued rigorously and passionately against Israel's war in Gaza and the steady erosion of its democratic norms. His early warning that Israel might be at risk of conducting genocide in Gaza and his later judgment that a genocide was under way became topics of international debate. In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Bartov sketches the transformation of Zionism from a movement that sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism. How is it possible, he asks, that a state founded in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, which brought a Jewish national home widespread approval, stands credibly accused of perpetrating large-scale war crimes? How do we come to terms with the fact that Israel's war of destruction in Gaza was conducted with the support, laced with denial and indifference, of so many of its Jewish citizens? Drawing from several decades of thinking and writing, Bartov explores the present crisis and the urgent questions it has raised. He tracks the origins of Zionism, the intertwining of Israel's independence with Palestinian displacement, the politics of the Holocaust and antisemitism, and a number of new ideas for how Jews and Arabs alike can achieve peace and security. Then, in an essay titled "The Missing Constitution," he discusses Israel's failure to draft a binding national compact, and the escalating consequences of this lost opportunity. The result is a searing critique that assesses the meaning of Zionism and the future of Israel with lucidity and depth." -- Jacket flap

In Defense of Sunlight

In Defense of Sunlight examines current research on the relationship between sunlight exposure and human health. Journalist Rowan Jacobsen reviews scientific studies concerning the potential benefits and risks of sun exposure, including its role in vitamin D production and its possible associations with a range of health conditions. The book discusses the development of public health recommendations on sun protection, considers differing effects of sunlight across populations with varying skin pigmentation, and presents the author's interpretation of emerging research on balancing sun exposure with skin cancer prevention. Written for a general audience, it explores the evolving scientific understanding of sunlight and its implications for health guidance.

How to Survive in the Woods

"Raised by a doomsday prepper and hardened by the start-up world, Emma Sharp has learned how to endure--especially in her marriage to Logan Grant, a charismatic tyrant who keeps her under tight control. To Emma, her marriage is a cage: it keeps her in, but it also keeps her safe. Until it doesn't. When Emma forms an unexpected bond with Logan's former girlfriend, the two women hatch a plan to help Emma take her life back. Destination: the punishing final stretch of the Appalachian Trail known as the Hundred Mile Wilderness. After all, bad things happen in the woods all the time. As the three venture deeper into Maine's backcountry, desire and dread curdle into something unpredictable, dark, and deadly. Someone is lying. Someone is watching. And in the remote heart of the forest, someone is about to be lost... or found."-- Front book flap

Homebound

Cincinnati, 1983. Becks is nineteen, blasting her Walkman and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle is dead. When she discovers the unfinished computer game he left behind, she pours her grief and anger into finishing it: one last collaboration to guide her out of loneliness. Berkeley, 2078. Dr. Tamar Portman is a brilliant scientist wrestling with her responsibility to humanity's precarious future--and to her mysterious creation. But when a project takes her out of academia and into the private sector, the ambitions of powerful people put everything at risk. The Atlantic, 2586. A jaded sea captain, Yesiko, will do whatever it takes to keep Babylon afloat and her fragile crew alive. Until she encounters the one compromise even she may be unwilling to make. And somewhere along the way, there is Chaya: a four-hundred-year-old automaton collecting stories and mining their own memories in a determined search for another life themself. All are bound together by a quest for community--and by a futuristic traveler on a solo mission through space. Front book flap

The Great Betrayal

"A history of the political instability in the Middle East, driven largely by great power conflict, and predictions for the future of the region. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 divided the Middle East into states with unnatural boundaries, drawn by colonial powers with short-term interests and no consideration for the people or future of the region. The century that followed saw bad governance, systemic corruption, geopolitical rivalries, and endless foreign intervention and meddling, effectively redrawing borders by force. While there is no singular cause for instability in the Middle East, Gerges's analysis explains the origins of numerous past and ongoing conflicts to draw conclusions about where the region is heading, using the past to predict the future of Arab politics, religion, and life. The Hundred Years War for the Middle East introduces Gerges's new Middle East, shaped by the changes and discontinuity of present day. He presents five major predictions for the next century: state collapse and the emergence of new states; the present state system enduring with minor alteration; durability of political authoritarianism; a new social contract based on constitutional arrangements; and a combination of both constitutionalism and political authoritarianism. From the Sykes-Picot Agreement to the rise of ISIS, our modern understanding of the key actors, non-state organizations (like Al Qaeda and ISIS), and dominant forces allows us to examine how changing relationships and rising tensions will shape the next century."-- Provided by publisher

A God-Shaped Nation

"Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant 'city on a hill,' religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom - Rhode Island welcomed the Quakers, Jews, and Baptists that Massachusetts expelled as dissenters - indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to protect their religious practices. With the constitutional separation of church and state, it fell to the American people to decide: would they sharpen religion's formidable powers of division, or reimagine its creative possibilities? In A God-Shaped Nation, Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2025 inauguration. It is a story of defiance: Anne Hutchinson, preaching against Puritan clergy; Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise serving soft-shell crab to his kosher guests; the Paiute man Wovoka envisioning the Ghost Dance movement in the face of violent government repression. It is also a story of community: Millerites waiting together in vain for Jesus's return on a rainy October night in 1844; Chinese immigrants bringing Daoist and Buddhist gods to their California temples; Mormons pushing westward to build their 'new Zion' in Utah. And in the last fifty years, it has been a story of muscular political power, as the religious right has sought both to shape the present and to paint the past in its own image. At this moment, when religion appears to shape even the most secular aspects of American life, understanding its complex history is more essential than ever. 'It is in history that the very human work of religion happens,' Wilensky-Lanford shows us, 'and in ordinary time that even the most carved-in-stone tenets can and do change.'" -- Publisher, dust jacket flaps

Ghost-Eye

"Past and present collide in a novel about a girl who just might be a "case of the reincarnation type." Varsha Gupta wants fish for lunch. Her family is shocked; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don’t allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life, in a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother. Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychologist who has been investigating what are known as "cases of the reincarnation type" for years. But her understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha's revelations. Half a century later, Varsha's case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, and Shoma's nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. As Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface. Traveling between late 1960s Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, Amitav Ghosh's Ghost-Eye is an urgent and expansive novel from one of our greatest living storytellers, about family, fate, and our fragile planet." -- Provided by publisher

Follow the Signs

"Description: If you've ever been on either end of the question "What's your sign?" you have Linda Goodman to thank, or blame. America's first New Age celebrity, her 1968 astrology book Sun Signs was the first of its kind to become a New York Times best seller (with over 60 million copies sold) and the advance for her second book, Love Signs, was an unprecedented $2.25 million. Yet, while Linda was teaching the world how to search the skies for clarity, she was also involved in her own mysterious pursuit. In 1973, her daughter was found dead and police declared it a suicide. Linda believed something more unusual was afoot, and spent years depleting her fortune, chasing down leads that might bring her beloved daughter. Many criticized her efforts, and the revolutionary nature of Linda's literary efforts have been largely forgotten since her death in 1995. But what happened to Linda Goodman? This question plagued Courtney Ann LaFaive who discovered Linda's work as a teenager at the public library decades after her heyday. Upon reading Linda's theories that love is "magic" and everyone's "deepest need," LaFaive became a devotee of her work. Later as a doctoral student, LaFaive seeks to redeem Goodman as a literary and spiritual figure in her dissertation. Yet, LaFaive's own impulsive forays into love and marriage compromise everything Linda ever wrote, and LaFaive's attempts to find the truth about Goodman's life run into roadblock after roadblock. In LaFaive's pursuit of the truth about Linda Goodman, Follow the Signs asks what it means when facts become stranger than fiction, wrenching truths come to light, and we must walk away from those we love." -- Provided by publisher

A Flood of Pictures

"When and how did pictures permeate everyday lives in the United States? What happened to those daily lives when they did? And what happened to pictures in the process? This book traces the beginnings of a transformation in cultural life in the US: when widespread circulation of pictures reshaped a culture accustomed to printed and spoken words. In the three decades before the Civil War, the ordinary experiences of a large segment of the population came to include pictures of many kinds, including illustrations in books, pamphlets, and newspapers; photographs on cards; full-sheet printed pictures collected in scrapbooks or albums or hung on walls; posters and broadsheets; spectacular paintings displayed in theatrical venues; and more. Pictures supplemented verbal texts--and in some cases overshadowed them--for conveying news and information; portraying people, places, and events; focusing public discourse; selling things; educating and instructing; generating excitement and aesthetic gratification; promoting and disguising political agendas; shaping social identities; and building and undermining social bonds. This study recovers a time before successful pictorial formulas for mass appeal were established, before an audience habituated to consumption of pictures existed, and before pictures had become thoroughly commodified. The foundations for our picture-saturated twenty-first century can be seen in the developments explored in this book."-- Publisher's description

The Fire Agent

"Born into an aristocratic German Jewish family, Ernst Baerwald is a gifted linguist, talented musician, and fearless idealist. When he's recruited in 1900 to become a spy--his cover working for a company that would become the notorious chemical conglomerate IG Farben--his life becomes an extraordinary adventure spanning two continents, two world wars, and impossible choices that will haunt him forever. From Frankfurt to Milan to Tokyo, Ernst moves through a world of intrigue and passion. He battles Japan's Yakuza while entertaining its royalty and hosts Europe's most brilliant performers. He falls deeply in love . . . with two women. He witnesses the rise of fascism in both Japan and Germany. And when the forces of fascism in Japan meet the horrors of Hitler's Germany, this German Jew faces an impossible choice: destroy the country he loves most or become complicit in unimaginable evil."-- Provided by publisher

The Family Man

"In March of 2023, Alex Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife Maggie and their younger son Paul at Moselle, their home in South Carolina's Lowcountry. By then the story had become headline news across the country, with its revelations of corruption in high places, massive fraud, opioid abuse, fake suicides, suspicious accidents, and the generational recklessness of the wealthy legal dynasty at its center. Featuring a cast of villains ranging from supposedly respectable bankers and lawyers to violent street gang members, the story has, not surprisingly, been the subject of several books and TV shows already. But few have focused on the enigma of Alex Murdaugh himself as brilliantly as James Lasdun's The Family Man. Having covered the case for the New Yorker, where his article became the magazine's most read story of 2023, the acclaimed novelist brings his long-standing interest in the darker drives of the human psyche to an investigation into the serial embezzlements, fatal boat crash and other events leading up to the slaughter at Moselle. Having traveled extensively in the Lowcountry interviewing people involved in the case (including Murdaugh's notorious 'Cousin Eddie') and attending hearings with Murdaugh himself, Lasdun looks at Murdaugh through a series of revelatory perspectives that include recordings of Murdaugh's jail conversations, the literature of criminal psychology, and the murder trial itself, to create a masterful portrait of his subject and an immersive account of the psychological and social processes by which a seemingly loving family man became a 'Family Annihilator.'"-- Provided by publisher

Empire of Skulls

"During the contentious and progressive antebellum era, the Fowler family preached a gospel of self-improvement to a nation eager to embrace its foundational beliefs. For the first time, this new "science" of phrenology offered all Americans the ability to improve their station by unlocking their innate mental and emotional truths. Revered politicians, quirky celebrities, infamous criminals, and social outcasts all found their way to the Fowlers for skull readings. Brimming with the energy to change the world, the Fowlers connected phrenology to practically every aspect of life in the young nation-from abolition to women's rights, temperance to prison reform, spiritualism and mesmerism to vegetarianism and sexual education. But there was a dark side to this fad and to the Fowlers, and soon nefarious forces co-opted this once-hopeful sensation to justify racism and xenophobia. Phrenology's complex history stands as a commentary on the dreams and follies of the American republic. Though phrenology (and the Fowlers) ran afoul of the tide of history, its aspirational insistence on an individual's ability to improve oneself became embedded in the fabric of the nation." -- Provided by publisher

Eat Your Ice Cream

"Every day brings a torrent of articles, videos, and podcasts about health and longevity. The 'Wellness Industrial Complex' offers conflicting advice and promises us more time to enjoy in the future but it sure is demanding a lot of time right now. In Eat Your Ice Cream, renowned health expert Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel argues that life is not a competition to live the longest, and that 'wellness' shouldn't be difficult; it should be an invisible part of one's lifestyle that yields maximum health benefits with the least work. Dr. Emanuel cuts through the noise with wit and good humor, giving readers just what they need: simple, high-impact, evidence-based guidelines to issues such as food and drink, exercise, sleep, mental acuity, and social engagement. Pairing common sense with uncommon wisdom based on his decades of expertise and experience, Dr. Emanuel helps readers decide which lifestyle changes are worth making and how to best implement them."-- Provided by publisher

Death of the Soccer God

"A global soccer star's epic ride to the 1950 World Cup places him in shooting distance of his dreams and his own death."-- Provided by publisher

Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep

"Meet Julia Flang, a twenty-something former professional gamer, living with her retired uncle, and working two jobs she doesn't like. Out of the blue, her estranged mother, a CFO for one of the world's largest tech companies, offers her a temp job with a payday Julia can't refuse. One sham interview later, she's offered the job: to chaperone a man in a vegetative state from California to the East Coast. But he's not dead dead: he has an AI mind implanted in his head. Meet a middle-aged man who wakes within a disorienting hellscape filled with monstrous grotesqueries. Worse than the fluid, morphing reality in which he's trapped, he has no memory of who he is. He certainly doesn't remember getting the rabbit tattoo on his arm. He only knows that he must find a certain person. Who? He can't remember. Using a cell phone modeled after a video game controller, Julia fumblingly navigates the man she calls 'Bernie' from the company campus and onto planes and through one of the largest airports in America. All the while, the man endures an ever-changing and worsening nightmare that offers clues as to who he was--and who he must track down. And as their two lives intertwine, Julia and Bernie become unlikely allies and fugitives on a collision course with reality." -- Provided by publisher

The Danger to Be Sane

"In this bold and deeply researched blend of memoir, essay, literary analysis, and intellectual sleuth story, Montero draws on psychology, neuroscience, and literature, as well as the lives of writers and artists, to explore the connection between creativity and mental vulnerability."-- Provided by publisher

Bellini

"Bellini is the most complete critical monograph ever published on the musician from Catania. Bellini's life is presented in the historical-social context of his time. The book provides essential information for each opera, including a plot summary and its relationships to literary sources. The operas are explored in depth from the point of view of their dramatic and musical structure and their cultural meaning, demonstrating that Bellini was not only the creator of memorable melodies but, above all, a first-rate dramatist who pursued a coherent theatrical project. The analysis does not follow page by page the unfolding of the action and its musical accompaniment. Instead, after providing an overall key and describing the main stylistic features, the author discusses a limited number of significant scenes and passages more closely." -- Provided by publisher

As if

Two men meet in an apartment in London. They are strangers to one another, and yet they look remarkably alike. Lewis is grieving his dead wife; Korine is hiding from his very-much-alive one. Lewis never had children; Korine has just walked out on his. Lewis is a retired actor whose career never amounted to much beyond a bit part on a B-list sitcom; Korine has always dreamed of acting. Slowly and then all at once, each begins to live on the other's behalf. As Korine answers a casting call under Lewis's name, Lewis finds himself playing father to the other man's son. Each day the strange ruse becomes truer and stranger, more entrenched. Plunged into an existential game of cat-and-mouse, pursuit and retreat, they find that acting might make it possible to, finally, live.

Artifacts

"Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later. Lena has done everything she can to put the study-abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist were shattered when her mentor, Cyrille, disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend, Giamma, went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back. Told in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with world heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth. Powerful and exuberant, Natalie Lemle's Artifacts brings readers behind the museum glass and asks questions about cultural heritage and the historical preservation of our shared sense of humanity."-- Book jacket flap

The Arthur Miller Tapes

"Private, previously unpublished conversations between the author and one of the twentieth century's greatest dramatists bring fresh and surprising insights into the life, motivations and relationships of the playwright behind such seminal works as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible." -- Provided by publisher