Sitting Pretty


Book Description

A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most. Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.







The Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Three: Titan's Curse


Book Description

In this third book of the acclaimed series, Percy and his friends are escorting two new half-bloods safely to camp when they are intercepted by a manticore and learn that the goddess Artemis has been kidnapped.




The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (Scholastic Gold)


Book Description

Avi's treasured Newbery Honor Book now in expanded After Words edition!Thirteen-year-old Charlotte Doyle is excited to return home from her school in England to her family in Rhode Island in the summer of 1832. But when the two families she was supposed to travel with mysteriously cancel their trips, Charlotte finds herself the lone passenger on a long sea voyage with a cruel captain and a mutinous crew. Worse yet, soon after stepping aboard the ship, she becomes enmeshed in a conflict between them! What begins as an eagerly anticipated ocean crossing turns into a harrowing journey, where Charlotte gains a villainous enemy . . . and is put on trial for murder!After Words material includes author Q & A, journal writing tips, and other activities that bring Charlotte's world to life!




The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium


Book Description

How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.




The How


Book Description

From the acclaimed poet behind bone, an exploration of how we can meet our truest selves, the ones we've always been meant to become Yrsa Daley-Ward's words have resonated with hundreds of thousands of readers--through her books of poetry and memoir, bone and The Terrible; through her writing for Beyoncé on Black Is King; and through her always illuminating Instagram posts. Now, in The How, Yrsa encourages readers to begin, as she puts it, the great work of meeting ourselves. This isn't the self we've built up in response to our surroundings, or the self we manufacture to please the people around us, but instead, our most intimate self, the one we visit in dreams, the one that calls to us from a glimmering future. With a mix of short lyrical musings and her signature stunning poetry, Yrsa gently takes readers by the hand, encouraging them to join her as she explores how we can remove our filters, and see and feel more of who we really are behind the preconceived notions of propriety and manners we've accumulated with age. With a beautiful design and intriguing meditations, The How can be used to start conversations, to prompt writing, to delve deeper--whether you're solo, or with friends, on your feet or writing from the solace of home.




Actual Air


Book Description

Back in print for the first time this era is David Berman s Actual Air. Released in paperback in 1999 by the now-defunct Open City and praised everywhere in the then-ascendant print press industry, David Berman s first (and only) book of poetry is a journey though shared and unreliable memory. Features of the second edition are: new larger dimensions and enlarged typeface, new dustjacket artwork variant, deluxe cloth boards, and updated full-colour endpapers.




The Poisonwood Bible


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.




Happily Ticked Off


Book Description

Former Hollywood sitcom writer and funny girl Andrea R. Frazer thought she had it all: a hunky husband, two gorgeous kids, a house in the 'burbs . . . but when her son was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome, a disorder that causes uncontrollable tics and twitches, her fantasy life imploded. Terrified, she feared he would bark, scream and curse in circle time. Turns out the only person who barked, screamed and cursed was Andrea, as she went head-to-head with this confusing condition. From diet to meds, shrinks to therapists, Frazer has written a no-holds-barred mom-moir about the realities of raising a kid on the spectrum. It isn't always pretty, but it's real, and if you're as scared as she was, clarity can look pretty darn gorgeous. Written with humor, transparency and most importantly, hope, it's Andrea's desire that this book will hold the hand of every special needs parent. "May it whisper in your ear, 'You did not cause this condition. Stop blaming yourself. You are not alone.' And while you're at it, eat a taco. Life is better with a little food. (Trust me on this one.)" ~ Andrea




Microbe Hunters


Book Description

First published in 1927.