ODY New Books Collection

The Last Dream

"Making his English language debut, the iconoclastic, Academy award-winning writer and director reveals his singular mind as never before in this collection of twelve remarkable stories spanning memoir, comedy, autofiction, parody, pastiche, and gothic fiction. With this debut collection, Almodovar delivers a tantalizing glimpse into his world, formed by twelve stories carefully selected from his personal writings dating from the late '60s to the present. Almodovar writes: "I've been asked to write my autobiography more than once, and I've always refused.... I've never kept a diary, and whenever I've tried, I've never made it to page two; in a sense, then, this book represents something of a paradox. It might be best described as a fragmentary autobiography, incomplete and a little enigmatic." Each entry reflects Almodovar's most intimate obsessions, as well as his evolution as an artist. In the title story, "The Last Dream," Almodovar reflects on the death of his mother. Other entries in the collection include a love story between Jesus and Barabbas, a story of retribution that formed the basis for the film Bad Education, a manic adventure about a film director searching for painkillers on a bank holiday weekend, and a gothic tale centered around a repentant vampire. Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne." -- Adapted from dust jacket

Interference

"The behind-the-scenes story of the investigation that shook America to its core--the Mueller investigation that presented the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election--as told by Robert Mueller's closest colleagues, including never-before-revealed details into how the team investigated Putin's campaign to favor candidate Donald Trump and Trump's efforts to interfere in the investigation."-- Publisher's website

The Incorruptibles

This harrowing tale of early twentieth century New York reveals the true stories of an immigrant underworld, a secret vice squad, and the rise of organized crime. In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands. Worried about the anti-immigration lobby and the uncertain future of Jewish Americans, the uptowners marshalled a strictly off-the-books vice squad led by an ambitious young reformer. The squad, known as the Incorruptibles, took the fight to the heart of crime in the city, waging war on the sin they saw as threatening the future of their community. Their efforts, however, led to unforeseen consequences in the form of a new mobster class who realized, in the country's burgeoning reform efforts, unprecedented opportunities to amass power. In this mesmerizing and atmospheric account, drawn from never-before-seen sources and peopled with unforgettable characters, Dan Slater tells an epic and often brutal saga of crime and redemption, exhuming a buried history that shaped our modern world.

How the New World Became Old

"During the nineteenth century, Americans were shocked to learn that the land beneath their feet had once been stalked by terrifying beasts. T. rex and Brontosaurus ruled the continent. North America was home to saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths, great herds of camels and hippos, and sultry tropical forests now fossilized into massive coal seams. How the New World Became Old tells the extraordinary story of how Americans discovered that the New World was not just old--it was a place rooted in deep time. In this panoramic book, Caroline Winterer traces the history of an idea that today lies at the heart of the nation's identity as a place of primordial natural beauty. Europeans called America the New World, and literal readings of the Bible suggested that Earth was only six thousand years old. Winterer takes readers from glacier-capped peaks in Yosemite to Alabama slave plantations and canal works in upstate New York, describing how naturalists, explorers, engineers, and ordinary Americans unearthed a past they never suspected, a history more ancient than anyone ever could have imagined. Drawing on archival evidence ranging from unpublished field notes and letters to early stratigraphic diagrams, How the New World Became Old reveals how the deep time revolution ushered in profound changes in science, literature, art, and religion, and how Americans came to realize that the New World might in fact be the oldest world of all." -- Provided by publisher

The Gates of Gaza

"On the morning of Saturday, October 7, Amir Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli settlement along the Gaza border. Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the family's reinforced safe room, urging their children not to cry while they listened to the gunfire from Hamas attackers outside their windows. With his cell phone battery running low, Amir texted his father: "They're here." Some 45 miles to the north, on the shores of Tel Aviv, Amir's parents saw the news at the same time that they received Amir's note. Still dripping from an early-morning swim, they jumped in their car and raced toward Nahal Oz, armed only with a pistol--but intent on saving their family at all costs. In The Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon tells his family's harrowing story in full for the first time, describing their terrifying ordeal--and the bravery that ultimately led to their rescue--alongside the histories of the place they call home and the systems of power that have kept them and their neighbors in Gaza in harm's way for decades, with no end in sight. This dynamic of purposeful hostility between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors will need to be fundamentally dismantled, he shows, if the region is to have any hope of peace. With deep sensitivity and drawing on Israeli and Palestinian sources as well as original interviews with the police officers and soldiers who fought alongside his parents on 10/7, Tibon offers an unsparing but ultimately hopeful view of this seemingly intractable conflict and its global reverberations."-- Provided by publisher

Don't
Be a Stranger

"A novel about a woman swept into a love affair at mid-life."-- Provided by publisher

Dogs and Monsters

"Greek myths have fascinated people for millennia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and sees them anew. The dawn goddess Eos asks Zeus to give her lover Tithonus eternal life, but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In "The Quiet Limit of the World" Haddon imagines Tithonus' life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time. In "The Mother's Story," Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king's wife Pasiphae, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. In "D.O.G.Z." the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior. Other stories play with contemporary mythic tropes -- genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism -- to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon's tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge. Throughout Haddon's supple prose showcases his astonishing powers of observation, of both the physical world and the workings of the psyche. His vision is clear-eyed, but always resolutely empathetic."-- Provided by publisher

Diary of a Crisis

"Explores the tumultuous and traumatic year of 2023 in Israel-Palestine."-- Provided by publisher

Carson the Magnificent

Twenty years in the making, Zemhe and Thomas's book examines one of the most inscrutable figures in entertainment history: a man who brought so much joy and laughter to so many millions but was himself exceedingly shy and private. Zehme traces Carson's rise from a magic-obsessed Nebraska boy to a Navy ensign in World War II to a burgeoning radio and TV personality to, eventually, host of The Tonight Show--which he transformed, along with the entirety of American popular culture, over the next three decades. -- Provided by publisher

Burdened

"The maddening story of the student debt crisis in America, revealing the rotten policies, corrupt systems, and bad actors that have created an intergenerational fiasco. A college degree costs more and is worth less than ever before. Tuition at public colleges has more than tripled in the past fifty years. Over the same period the total volume of student debt in America has grown from virtually nothing to more than 1.7 trillion dollars, second only to home mortgages. Skyrocketing student loan burdens are leading multiple generations -- first millennials, and now Gen Z -- to put off the traditional milestones of adulthood: getting married, buying homes, starting families, and saving for retirement. The strain weighs even heavier on women and Black Americans. And with almost 10 percent of student debtors now over the age of sixty, it is a crisis no longer limited to the young. Ryann Liebenthal's Burdened exposes how the power plays of legislators and presidents, the commodification of higher education, and the rapacious practices of for-profit colleges and private lenders created today's student debt lava pit. This is the story of how infighting, moral failure, bigotry, militarism, and usury formed a system that almost no one can understand or navigate -- but which afflicts one in six American adults. As the notion of student loan cancellation enters the political mainstream, the future of student debt, and higher education itself, hangs in the balance. Deeply researched and dramatically told, Burdened is a timely rallying cry that charts a way out by offering clear-eyed solutions to this seemingly unfixable problem." -- Jacket flap

Book and Dagger

"The untold story of the academics who became OSS spies, invented modern spycraft, and helped turn the tide of the war At the start of WWII, the US found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today's CIA, was quickly formed--and, in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians, and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work--and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and our cultural institutions with their efforts. In Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham draws on personal histories, diaries, and declassified OSS files to tell the story of a small but connected group of humanities scholars turned unlikely spies. Among them are Joseph Curtiss, a literature professor who hunted down German spies and turned them into double agents; Sherman Kent, a smart-mouthed history professor who rose to become the head of analysis for all of Europe and Africa; and Adele Kibre, an archivist who was sent to Stockholm to secretly acquire documents for the OSS. These unforgettable characters would ultimately help lay the foundations of modern intelligence and transform American higher education when they returned after the war. Thrillingly paced and rigorously researched, Book and Dagger is an inspiring and gripping true story about a group of academics who helped beat the Nazis--a tale that reveals the indelible power of humanities to change the world."-- Provided by publisher

Beyond the Big Lie

"An unprecedented, colorful look at how and why politicians lie -- and why republicans do it more. In this groundbreaking book, Bill Adair, founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website PolitiFact, reveals how politicians lie and why. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience covering Washington and dozens of candid interviews with politicians, political operatives, and experts in misinformation, Adair reveals the patterns of lying, why Republicans do it more, and the frightening consequences for our democracy from the current epidemic. Compelling and, at times, surprisingly funny, Beyond the Big Lie takes us behind the scenes to show the cynical calculations of political campaigns and elected officials who have accepted lying as a routine weapon in our daily political battles. Through vivid stories of a January 6 invader, a state senator who refused to lie, and a government official who endured a relentless assault from GOP lawmakers, Adair sheds new light on a critical problem. Adair shows how political lying began long before Donald Trump -- and is unlikely to end even after he's gone. He explores how Republicans have tried to change the landscape to allow their lying by intimidating the news media and people in academia. And he concludes by suggesting practical solutions that could actually address the dishonesty at the center of our politics. An award-winning journalist and pioneer in political fact-checking, Adair is uniquely qualified to tell this story. Beyond the Big Lie offers an engaging tale of political liars and a vision of how to make them stop." -- Jacket flap

Ask Not

"For decades, the Kennedy name has been synonymous with wealth, power, and—above all else—integrity. But this carefully constructed veneer hides a dark truth: the Kennedy men’s legacy of physical and psychological abuse of women, part of a tradition of toxic masculinity that spans generations and has ruined untold lives. Through scandal after scandal, the family and their defenders have managed to keep this shameful story out of the spotlight. Now, in Ask Not, bestselling journalist Maureen Callahan reveals the Kennedys’ hidden history of abuse and exploitation, laying bare their rampant misogyny and restoring women to the center of the dynasty’s story: from Jacqueline Onassis and Marilyn Monroe to Carolyn Bessette, Mary Richardson, Rosemary Kennedy, and many others whose names aren’t nearly as well known – but rightfully should be. Drawing on years of fierce reportage and written in electric prose, Ask Not is a long-overdue reckoning with this fabled American family, showing how the Kennedy myth and their raw political power has enabled the clan’s many predators while also silencing generations of traumatized women and girls. At long last, Callahan also redirects the spotlight to the women in the Kennedys’ orbit, paying homage to those who freed themselves—and giving voice to the countless others who could not do the same." -- Provided by publisher

Alexander Von Humboldt

"In this lucid biography, Andreas Daum offers a succinct and novel interpretation of the life and oeuvre of Alexander von Humboldt (1769―1859). A Prussian nobleman born into the age of European Enlightenment, Humboldt was a contemporary of Napoleon, Simón Bolívar, and Charles Darwin. As a naturalist and scholar, he traveled the world, from the Americas to Central Asia, and recorded his observations in multiple volumes. Humboldt is still admired today for his interdisciplinary outreach and ecological awareness. Moving beyond the conventional views of Humboldt as either intellectual superhero or gentleman colonizer, Daum’s incisive account focuses on Humboldt in the context of the tumultuous period of history in which he lived. Humboldt embodied the contradictions that marked the age of Atlantic Revolutions. He became a critic of slavery and embraced the emerging civil society but remained close to authoritarian rulers. He dedicated his life to scientific research yet was driven by emotional impulses and pleaded for an aesthetic appreciation of nature. Daum introduces a man passionately striving to establish a 'cosmic' understanding of nature while grappling with the era’s explosion of knowledge. This book provides the first concise biography of Humboldt, covering all periods of his life, exploring his personality, the vast range of his works, and his intellectual networks. Daum helps us understand Humboldt as a seminal historical figure and illuminates the role of science at the dawn of the global world." -- Jacket

Sister Deborah

"In early twentieth-century Rwanda, Catholic priests, sponsored by the European colonial powers, celebrate Yezu and Maria, forcing mass conversions upon the rural population. Meanwhile, a small band of Black American evangelists preach the imminent coming of a Black savior who will restore Rwanda to its former greatness. Their prophetess, sister Deborah, who can heal with her touch, predicts that this new Messiah will be a black woman: 'A thousand years of joy for women, after thousands of years of misfortune!' The women go on strike, troubles spread, the colonial troops intervene. Sister Deborah disappears; some say she was murdered, others that she has been reincarnated in Nairobi. The narrator, Ikirezi, sets out to investigate what really happened to Sister Deborah, soon finding that her own life has been put in danger, and leading her to an agonizing choice." -- Book flap

Suggested in the Stars

"It's hard to believe there could be a more enjoyable novel than Scattered All Over the Earth--Yoko Tawada's rollicking, touching, cheerfully dystopian novel about friendship and climate change--but its sequel, Suggested in the Stars, delivers exploits even more poignant and shambolic. As Hiruko--whose Land of Sushi has vanished into the sea and who is still searching for someone who speaks her mother tongue--and her new friends travel onward, they begin opening up to one another in new and extraordinary ways. They try to help their friend Susanoo regain his voice, both for his own good and so he can speak with Hiruko. Amid many often hilarious misunderstandings (some linguistic in nature), they empower each other against despair. Coping with carbon footprint worries but looping singly and in pairs, Hiruko and her friends hitchhike, take late-night motorcycle rides, and hop on the train (learning about railway strikes but also packed-train yoga) to convene in Copenhagen. There they find Susanoo in a strange hospital working with a scary speech-loss doctor. In the half-basement of this weird medical center (with strong echoes of Lars von Trier's 1990s TV series The Kingdom), they also find two special kids washing dishes. They discover magic radios, personality swaps, ship tickets delivered by a robot, and other gifts. But friendship--loaning one another the nerve and heart to keep going--sets them all (and the reader) to dreaming of something more. Suggested in the Stars delivers new delights, and Yoko Tawada's famed new trilogy will conclude in 2025 with Archipelago of the Sun, even if nobody will ever want this "strange, exquisite" (The New Yorker) trip to end."-- Provided by publisher

Tattoos

"There is a pervasive stereotype of tattoo culture as relating to an underworld of scoundrels, sailors, and ne’er-do-wells, yet it has existed in the West as a professionalized art practice for centuries. Drawing on extensive new research and unprecedented access to largely unpublished private archives of photographs, art, and ephemera, Matt Lodder offers a new perspective on the history of commercial tattooing in Europe and the United States, beginning even before it emerged as a recognizable profession in the mid-nineteenth century. In the process, he shows that the art of tattoo has long been both practiced and commissioned by individuals across economic, gender, and class divides; he also examines the stylistic trends that have shaped tattoo’s development as an art form over its history. Lodder introduces the many artists and professionals who shaped tattoo history, including early figures like Martin Hildebrandt, the first-known professional tattoo artist in the West; prominent woman artists like Grace Bell and Jessie Knight; mid-twentieth-century icons like Sailor Jerry and Les Skuse and the Bristol Tattoo Club; and contemporary industry stars including Ed Hardy, Davy Jones, and the Leu family. Richly illustrated with rarely published images, this important book is the first to examine the history of tattoo in the west as both a serious profession and an art form." -- taken from publisher's website

The Selected Shepherd

Drawing from all six of his collections, The Selected Shepherd offers a new retrospective on the work of an important and sometimes controversial Black, gay poet. Although well known for his erotic poems about white men, Shepherd also wrote consistently about the natural world and its endangerment and his grief over his mother's death. Presented in both publication order and the order in which they originally appeared within each collection, these poems highlight the most important themes of Shepherd's work, along with both his predictability and unpredictability as a poet. Jericho Brown's introduction provides additional context and insight on the life and work of this complex, groundbreaking figure in American poetry.

Savings and Trust

"In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Bank. African Americans envisioned this new bank as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination. But only nine years after it opened, their trust was betrayed and the Freedman's Bank collapsed. Fully informed by new archival findings, historian Justene Hill Edwards unearths a major turning point in American history in this comprehensive account of the Freedman's Bank and its depositors. She illuminates the hope with which the bank was first envisioned and demonstrates the significant setback that the sabotage of the bank caused in the fight for economic autonomy. Hill Edwards argues for a new interpretation of its tragic failure: the bank's white financiers drove the bank into the ground, not Fredrick Douglass, its final president, or its Black depositors and cashiers. A story filled with both well-known figures like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Jay and Henry Cooke, and General O. O. Howard, and less well-known figures like Dr. Charles B. Purvis, John Mercer Langston, Congressman Robert Smalls, and Ellen Baptiste Lubin. This book can be used to understand the roots of racial economic inequality in America." -- Provided by publisher

Quarterlife

Quarterlife is a groundbreaking portrait of a nation on the cusp of a new age. A group of young people converge in Mumbai after an election brings the divisive Bharat Party to power: Naren, a jaded Wall Street consultant lured home by the promise of "better days," is accompanied by Amanda, a restless New Englander eager to live her ideals through a social impact fellowship in a slum. Meanwhile, Naren's brother Rohit, the charismatic talent scout, sets out to explore his roots in the countryside and falls in with the fiery young men that drive the Hindu nationalist machine. As they each come to grips with the new India, their journeys coalesce into a riveting milieu characterized by brutal debates and desires as fraught as they are compulsive. The result is an ever-widening chorus that feeds into a festive night when all of Mumbai is on the streets--and the simmering unrest erupts. Quarterlife is as sweeping as it is intimate. With grace and precision, Devika Rege lays bare the moral and psychological roots of political belief in a time of reckoning for democracies worldwide. No one is spared, not even the writer. An urgent and prismatic debut, Quarterlife announces Rege as an evocative new voice in fiction and an author who is unafraid to test the limits of what the novel can achieve.-- Publisher description