Conversations with Things


Book Description

Welcome to the future, where you can talk with the digital things around you: voice assistants, chatbots, and more. But these interactions can be unhelpful and frustrating—sometimes even offensive or biased. Conversations with Things teaches you how to design conversations that are useful, ethical, and human–centered—because everyone deserves to be understood, especially you.




Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse


Book Description

In his latest interview collection, David Jay Brown has once again gathered some of the most interesting minds of today to consider the future of the human race, the mystery of consciousness, the evolution of technology, psychic phenomena, and more. The book includes conversations with celebrated visionaries and inspirational figures such as Ram Dass, Noam Chomsky, Deepak Chopra, and George Carlin. Part scientific exploration, part philosophical speculation, and part intellectual rollercoaster, the free-form discussions are original and captivating, and offer surprising revelations. Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse is a new look into the minds of some of our groundbreaking leaders and is the perfect gift for science fiction and philosophy fans alike.




The Edge of Everywhen


Book Description

"Hello, Reader. I am honored to know you." Tragedy is sometimes followed by mystery, at least that's what faces 13-year-old Piper and her brother, Phoenix, who has autism. Mourning the loss of their parents, they must move a thousand miles away to live with their insufferable Aunt Beryl. But it is in their aunt's cavernous library that Piper and Phoenix hear a mysterious book calling to them. Its name is Novus Fabula, and its story will change their lives forever. "What's that you say? Books cannot speak? On the contrary, dear Reader. Quite the contrary. Books are one of the few things on this earth that truly speak. Let me show you." Join Piper and Phoenix in the Verboten Library as they begin an intriguing journey of grief, wonder, and the search for Truth. If you stand with them at the edge of everywhen, you just might discover the story you need to hear as well. "The Edge of Everywhen is a beautiful story that is part Wrinkle in Time, part My Neighbor Totoro, and all magic. A perfect read for middle grade readers with heart and soul between the pages. I laughed, I cried, I loved this story!" —Morgan L. Busse, award-winning author of the RAVENWOOD SAGA.




Good Talk


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “beautiful and eye-opening” (Jacqueline Woodson), “hilarious and heart-rending” (Celeste Ng) graphic memoir about American identity, interracial families, and the realities that divide us, from the acclaimed author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, The New York Public Library, Publishers Weekly • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, BuzzFeed, Esquire, Literary Journal, Kirkus Reviews “How brown is too brown?” “Can Indians be racist?” “What does real love between really different people look like?” Like many six-year-olds, Mira Jacob’s half-Jewish, half-Indian son, Z, has questions about everything. At first they are innocuous enough, but as tensions from the 2016 election spread from the media into his own family, they become much, much more complicated. Trying to answer him honestly, Mira has to think back to where she’s gotten her own answers: her most formative conversations about race, color, sexuality, and, of course, love. Written with humor and vulnerability, this deeply relatable graphic memoir is a love letter to the art of conversation—and to the hope that hovers in our most difficult questions. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/OPEN BOOK AWARD “Jacob’s earnest recollections are often heartbreaking, but also infused with levity and humor. What stands out most is the fierce compassion with which she parses the complexities of family and love.”—Time “Good Talk uses a masterful mix of pictures and words to speak on life’s most uncomfortable conversations.”—io9 “Mira Jacob just made me toss everything I thought was possible in a book-as-art-object into the garbage. Her new book changes everything.”—Kiese Laymon, New York Times bestselling author of Heavy




Conversations on the Edge


Book Description

At the edge of mortality there is a place where the seriously ill or dying wait—a place where they may often feel vulnerable or alone. For over forty years, bioethicist cum philosopher Richard Zaner has been at the side of many of those people offering his incalculable gift of listening, and helping to lighten their burdens—not only with his considerable skills, but with his humanity as well. The narratives Richard Zaner shares in Conversations on the Edge are informed by his depth of knowledge in medicine and bioethics, but are never "clinical." A genuine and caring heart beats underneath his compassionate words. Zaner has written several books in which he tells poignant stories of patients and families he has encountered; there is no question that this is his finest. In Conversations on the Edge, Zaner reveals an authentic empathy that never borders on the sentimental. Among others, he discusses Tom, a dialysis patient who finally reveals that his inability to work—encouraged by his overprotective mother—is the source of his hostility to treatment; Jim and Sue, young parents who must face the nightmare of letting go of their premature twins, one after the other; Mrs. Oland, whose family refuses to recognize her calm acceptance of her own death; and, in the final chapter, the author's mother, whose slow demise continues to haunt Zaner's professional and personal life. These stories are filled with pain and joy, loneliness and hope. They are about life and death, about what happens in hospital rooms—and that place at the edge—when we confront mortality. It is the rarest of glimpses into the world of patients, their families, healers, and those who struggle, like Zaner, to understand.




Black Faces, White Spaces


Book Description

Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors




Cutting Edge Conversations


Book Description

EJ 'Ted' Cutting was not only Aston Martin's most successful Chief Race Car Design Engineer, but was also an innovator with influential force on the worldwide automotive industry. Originating from a limited edition hardback version, this eBook was produced in celebration of the 60th anniversary of Aston Martin winning the World Sports Car Championship for Britain with the all-conquering DBR1 designed, engineered and created by Ted himself. Rather than a traditional biography of his life, Ted wanted his book to be rather less scripted and informal; it was therefore initially adapted from a number of recorded conversations between himself and Aston Martin Heritage Trust members Stuart Bailey and Brian Joscelyne - the title being an obvious choice considering this! In addition to the in-depth telling of a legendary period in British motorsport by a man at the centre of it all, the book also sees Ted clarify a number of details which have in the past been incorrectly reported. Unusually it also contains all his published documents and access to a 90 minute video of his unique lecture on 'Racing Astons' to further endorse his story. Although the original hardback edition of this book was produced only in a limited run, Ted's wish was to make the complete book available to a much wider audience, now possible through the internet; as an engineer always working at the cutting edge of technology, he would appreciate the benefits of information sharing in the digital age. As well as being of interest to fans of Aston Martin and of motorsports in general, the book is a compelling read for any student of automotive design and engineering; after all, progress is about standing on the shoulders of giants - and in the field of race car design, few individuals ever reach the colossal heights achieved by Ted Cutting.




At the Edge of Life


Book Description

Drawing on 60 years of experience as pastor, hospice chaplain, volunteer, and friend to dying persons, Richard Morgan offers perspective and advice to people coping with a family member, friend, or patient who is approaching the time of death. These 30 meditations take us from accepting our own mortality and the impending death of someone we care about through "making preparations," "finding closure," and "dying moments." In each meditation Morgan uses personal stories and scripture to lead into a reflection question and prayer. The result is a sense of peace that gives readers confidence as companions to the dying.




Infrastructures of Apocalypse


Book Description

A new approach to the vast nuclear infrastructure and the apocalypses it produces, focusing on Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American literatures Since 1945, America has spent more resources on nuclear technology than any other national project. Although it requires a massive infrastructure that touches society on myriad levels, nuclear technology has typically been discussed in a limited, top-down fashion that clusters around powerful men. In Infrastructures of Apocalypse, Jessica Hurley turns this conventional wisdom on its head, offering a new approach that focuses on neglected authors and Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American perspectives. Exchanging the usual white, male “nuclear canon” for authors that include James Baldwin, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ruth Ozeki, Infrastructures of Apocalypse delivers a fresh literary history of post-1945 America that focuses on apocalypse from below. Here Hurley critiques the racialized urban spaces of civil defense and reads nuclear waste as a colonial weapon. Uniting these diverse lines of inquiry is Hurley’s belief that apocalyptic thinking is not the opposite of engagement but rather a productive way of imagining radically new forms of engagement. Infrastructures of Apocalypse offers futurelessness as a place from which we can construct a livable world. It fills a blind spot in scholarship on American literature of the nuclear age, while also offering provocative, surprising new readings of such well-known works as Atlas Shrugged, Infinite Jest, and Angels in America. Infrastructures of Apocalypse is a revelation for readers interested in nuclear issues, decolonial literature, speculative fiction, and American studies.




Third Culture


Book Description

This eye-opening look at the intellectual culture of today--in which science, not literature or philosophy, takes center stage in the debate over human nature and the nature of the universe--is certain to spark fervent intellectual debate.