My Estonia: Passport Forgery, Meat Jelly Eaters, and Other Stories


Book Description

Some people have said this book is romantic and maybe it is: a young lost American college grad falls in love with an intriguing European journalist and embarks on a journey that restores his faith in himself and the world. Sure, it is romantic. But it was never easy. A foreigner arrives in the middle of a dark winter and must survive in Estonia, the "least fortunate Scandinavian country," a land where people eat blood sausage and jellied meat, drink warm bread, and are always on time; a place where every family is haunted by the past and is struggling to catch up to the present. Over the course of one year, so much happens in this tiny northern land that it stops being foreign. Estonia and the college grad turned journalist become intimately acquianted. Inseparable. And in the end, he comes to love it, even when they do not want to let him back into their country.




Cuisine and Culture


Book Description

Cuisine and Culture presents a multicultural and multiethnic approach that draws connections between major historical events and how and why these events affected and defined the culinary traditions of different societies. Witty and engaging, Civitello shows how history has shaped our diet--and how food has affected history. Prehistoric societies are explored all the way to present day issues such as genetically modified foods and the rise of celebrity chefs. Civitello's humorous tone and deep knowledge are the perfect antidote to the usual scholarly and academic treatment of this universally important subject.




Word Searches For Dummies


Book Description

A travel-friendly puzzle-packed book that keeps the brain in shape One of the best ways to exercise the mind is through word and logic games like word searches and Sudoku. Studies have shown that doing word searches frequently can help prevent diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. Word Searches For Dummies is a great way to strengthen the mind and keep the brain active plus, it's just plain fun! This unique guide features several different types of word searches that take readers beyond simply circling the answer: secret shape word searches, story word searches, listless word searches, winding words, quiz word searches, and more. It provides a large number of puzzles at different levels that will both test and exercise the mind while keeping the reader entertained for hours.




My Viljandi


Book Description

This book is a surreal account of some years spent in this small town. I arrived by train one evening, wondering why I had even returned. My marriage was over and my main companions were a notebook and pen. Then things started to happen. I fell in love with a Designer, was bewitched by Miss Cloud, comforted by a Lioness, and captivated by a Tigress. In Viljandi, I met divas, chefs, soothsayers, diplomats, poets, musicians, generals, bartenders, TV stars, and even boatmen. There were harvest parties, folk festivals, café and theater scenes, bonfires and yoga lessons. And coffee! Lots of coffee! But the main thing I learned during these years was this: you cannot write without love.




Point and Figure Charting


Book Description

"Everyone who's involved in financial markets must understand Point and Figure charting in order to get the full picture, whatever your view of technical analysis". - Jim Rogers, author of Hot Commodities and Investment Biker "An invaluable road map for managing risk in the markets. Tom's methodology has given us the discipline and confidence to look around corners for our clients for almost twenty years." - James A. Parish, President and COO, Morgan Keegan & Co., Private Client Group "Tom Dorsey continues to be one of the foremost authorities on Point and Figure charting. His relative strength analyses are essential for investors and traders alike. Furthermore, I always want to know what his NYSE Bullish Percent Indicators is "saying." - Lawrence G. McMillan, President, McMillan Analysis Corp., www.optionstrategist.com "Tom Dorsey has done it again... he has taken his 30-plus years of unending devotion, talents, and insights in technical analysis and applied them to Exchange Traded Funds. He begins with the history of ETFs, explains how different they are from mutual funds, and then applies his expertise in Point and Figure charting to help traders and investors time their purchases and sales." - Ralph J. Acampora, CMT, Director of Technical research, Knight Capital "Reading Tom Dorsey's Point & Figure Charting is the like procuring a road map before you begin a journey. It's a comprehensive look at how to succeed in the markets. This book is not only essential but easy to follow for everyone." - Paulo Pinto, CEO, Dif Broker "Point and Figure Charting has become a valuable part of my daily trading routine. As an investment professional, it makes perfect sense to use Tom's methods in conjunction with fundamental analysis." - Damion Carufe, Investment Professional







A Complicated Kindness


Book Description

Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award In this stunning coming-of-age novel, the award-winning author of Women Talking balances grief and hope in the voice of a witty, beleaguered teenager whose family is shattered by fundamentalist Christianity "Half of our family, the better–looking half, is missing," Nomi Nickel tells us at the beginning of A Complicated Kindness. Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, her days are spent piecing together why her mother and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts of East Village. Not the East Village in New York City where Nomi would prefer to live, but an oppressive town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada. This darkly funny novel is the world according to the unforgettable Nomi, a bewildered and wry sixteen–year–old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion and in the shattered remains of a family it destroyed. In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of an eccentric, loving family that falls apart as each member lands on a collision course with the only community any of them have ever known. A work of fierce humor and tragedy by a writer who has taken the American market by storm, this searing, tender, comic testament to family love will break your heart. “Brilliant.” —New York Times Book Review “A darkly funny and provocative novel.” —O, the Oprah Magazine




Estonia and Poland


Book Description




The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943


Book Description

Drawing from engrossing survivors' accounts, many never before published, The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943 recounts a heroic yet little-known chapter in Holocaust history. In vivid and moving detail, Barbara Epstein chronicles the history of a Communist-led resistance movement inside the Minsk ghetto, which, through its links to its Belarussian counterpart outside the ghetto and with help from others, enabled thousands of ghetto Jews to flee to the surrounding forests where they joined partisan units fighting the Germans. Telling a story that stands in stark contrast to what transpired across much of Eastern Europe, where Jews found few reliable allies in the face of the Nazi threat, this book captures the texture of life inside and outside the Minsk ghetto, evoking the harsh conditions, the life-threatening situations, and the friendships that helped many escape almost certain death. Epstein also explores how and why this resistance movement, unlike better known movements at places like Warsaw, Vilna, and Kovno, was able to rely on collaboration with those outside ghetto walls. She finds that an internationalist ethos fostered by two decades of Soviet rule, in addition to other factors, made this extraordinary story possible.




McMafia


Book Description

Drugs, weapons, migrant labour, women — these are just a few of the many goods that effortlessly cross national borders in this globalized age, often without the knowledge or permission of the nations concerned. How is this remarkable criminal feat managed?From gun runners in the Ukraine, to money launderers in Dubai, cyber criminals in Brazil, racketeers in Japan, and the booming marijuana industry in western Canada, McMafia builds a breathtaking picture of a secret and bloody business.Internationally celebrated writer Misha Glenny crafts a fascinating, highly readable, and impressively well-researched account of the emergence of organized crime as a globalized phenomenon and shows how its secret and bloody business mirrors both the methods and the rewards of the legitimate world economy. Employing his journalistic talent and his prior experience covering organized crime in Eastern Europe, Glenny reports on his travels around the planet to investigate this worrying and worsening situation. After comprehensively surveying the criminal scene, Glenny ends by considering the future of organized crime. McMafia is an important book that assembles all the pieces of this worldwide puzzle for the first time.