The Upside of Hunger


Book Description

"Beautiful, shocking, at times painful... the magnificently told story of a man who triumphed over the limitations of history to become his greatest self." Ginger Moran, The Algebra of Snow. The life he was born into was too small for Adam Baumann. But getting out in the midst of a world at war, was dangerous. Born in an isolated village in eastern Hungary between the great wars, Adam yearned for more. More excitement, more freedom, more knowledge of the world... and often more food. Locked up for theft at age nine, Adam's life took one tumultuous turn after another. From a twelve-year-old stable hand on a nobleman's estate, to a fifteen-year-old shivering in a foxhole on the Eastern Front, Adam's hunger for a bigger life led him into spine tingling adventures, mind-numbing horror, heart-breaking tears, and terrifying brushes with death. Awakening in a makeshift hospital with a shattered left leg, Adam was catapulted into a series of captures and narrow escapes from enemy forces as Europe reeled from the final destruction and horror of WWII. Never standing still, he journeyed through war-torn landscapes to find and reunite his family, and began to build a life from the ashes, until the results of a medical examination at an American Embassy in Germany changed the course of his future forever.




The Hungry Brain


Book Description

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year From an obesity and neuroscience researcher with a knack for engaging, humorous storytelling, The Hungry Brain uses cutting-edge science to answer the questions: why do we overeat, and what can we do about it? No one wants to overeat. And certainly no one wants to overeat for years, become overweight, and end up with a high risk of diabetes or heart disease--yet two thirds of Americans do precisely that. Even though we know better, we often eat too much. Why does our behavior betray our own intentions to be lean and healthy? The problem, argues obesity and neuroscience researcher Stephan J. Guyenet, is not necessarily a lack of willpower or an incorrect understanding of what to eat. Rather, our appetites and food choices are led astray by ancient, instinctive brain circuits that play by the rules of a survival game that no longer exists. And these circuits don’t care about how you look in a bathing suit next summer. To make the case, The Hungry Brain takes readers on an eye-opening journey through cutting-edge neuroscience that has never before been available to a general audience. The Hungry Brain delivers profound insights into why the brain undermines our weight goals and transforms these insights into practical guidelines for eating well and staying slim. Along the way, it explores how the human brain works, revealing how this mysterious organ makes us who we are.




Reality Hunger


Book Description

A landmark book, “brilliant, thoughtful” (The Atlantic) and “raw and gorgeous” (LA Times), that fast-forwards the discussion of the central artistic issues of our time, from the bestselling author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead. Who owns ideas? How clear is the distinction between fiction and nonfiction? Has the velocity of digital culture rendered traditional modes obsolete? Exploring these and related questions, Shields orchestrates a chorus of voices, past and present, to reframe debates about the veracity of memoir and the relevance of the novel. He argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality,” precisely because we experience hardly any, and urgently calls for new forms that embody and convey the fractured nature of contemporary experience.




Hungry City


Book Description

'Cities cover just 2% of the world’s surface, but consume 75% of the world’s resources’. The relationship between food and cities is fundamental to our everyday lives. Food shapes cities and through them it moulds us - along with the countryside that feeds us. Yet few of us are conscious of the process and we rarely stop to wonder how food reaches our plates. Hungry City examines the way in which modern food production has damaged the balance of human existence, and reveals that we have yet to resolve a centuries-old dilemma - one which holds the key to a host of current problems, from obesity and the inexorable rise of the supermarkets, to the destruction of the natural world. Original, inspiring and written with infectious enthusiasm and belief, Hungry City illuminates an issue that is fundamental to us all.




Endless Appetites


Book Description

How to understand the twenty-first century food crisis Since 2007, farm-product prices have rocketed and plunged, causing hunger, malnutrition, and social and political upheaval around the world. Endless Appetites explores how "food security," the availability of food and the reasonable ability to buy it, has become one of the most challenging topics of our time. With every jump in grocery-store prices, the issue becomes more and more pressing, proven by this year's record increase in food prices, which has already topped the spike of 2008. Award-winning commodities reporter Alan Bjerga explains the food crisis and why it is happening in an accessible, articulate manner Why is this happening when more food is being grown than ever? Why are crop markets?first established in the 1800's to help stabilize agricultural commodity prices?acting like an investors' casino, with prices absorbed by rich nations taking food from the mouths of the poor? From college campuses to emergency UN meetings, "food security" is one of the hottest topics of the day, with no shortage of interest in how to stabilize food prices worldwide to close the hunger gap To understand the growing international food crisis, readers need an expert they can rely on. One of the most widely acclaimed journalists on food security, Alan Bjerga is up to the task, taking readers from the trading floor of Chicago to the highlands of East Africa to the rice paddies of Thailand on a global trek to find the causes of the food-price crisis?and the solutions.




The Upside of Stress


Book Description

Drawing from groundbreaking research, psychologist and award-winning teacher Kelly McGonigal, PhD, offers a surprising new view of stress—one that reveals the upside of stress, and shows us exactly how to capitalize on its benefits. You hear it all the time: stress causes heart disease; stress causes insomnia; stress is bad for you! But what if changing how you think about stress could make you happier, healthier, and better able to reach your goals? Combining exciting new research on resilience and mindset, Kelly McGonigal, PhD, proves that undergoing stress is not bad for you; it is undergoing stress while believing that stress is bad for you that makes it harmful. In fact, stress has many benefits, from giving us greater focus and energy, to strengthening our personal relationships. McGonigal shows readers how to cultivate a mindset that embraces stress, and activate the brain's natural ability to learn from challenging experiences. Both practical and life-changing, The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress, but a toolkit for getting better at it—by understanding, accepting, and leveraging it to your advantage.




Hungry Hearts


Book Description

Sixteen innovators, creatives, and thought leaders—Austin Channing Brown, Sue Monk Kidd, and Luvvie Ajayi Jones, among others—share intimate stories of uncovering beauty and potential through moments of fear, loss, heartbreak, and uncertainty. “You’ll find kindred spirits in these tales of resilience, transformation, and joy.”—Time Over the course of four years, the traveling love rally called Together Live brought together diverse storytellers for epic evenings of laughter, music, and hard-won wisdom to huge audiences across the country. Well-known womxn (and the occasional man) from all walks of life shared their most vulnerable truths in a radical act of love, paving the way for healing in the face of adversity. Now, off the stage and on the pages of Hungry Hearts, sixteen of these beloved speakers offer moving, inspiring, deeply personal essays as a reminder that we can heal from grief and that divisions can be repaired. Bozoma Saint John opens herself up to love after loss; Cameron Esposito confronts the limits of self-reliance in the wake of divorce; Ashley C. Ford learns to trust herself for the first time. A heartfelt anthology of transformation, self-discovery, and courage that also includes essays by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, Amena Brown, Austin Channing Brown, Natalie Guerrero, Sue Monk Kidd, Connie Lim (MILCK), Nkosingiphile Mabaso, Jillian Mercado, Priya Parker, Geena Rocero, Michael Trotter and Tanya-Blount Trotter of The War and Treaty, and Maysoon Zayid, Hungry Hearts shows how reconnecting with our own burning, undeniable intuition points us toward our unique purpose and the communities where we most belong.




City of Hunger


Book Description

Traveling through rural Montana, Blake and Susan Hanson stumble upon a small, abandoned town known as 'Bobcat.' Eager to kill time before meeting their family in Washington, they decide to explore the town. They find broken down cars, looted stores, and raided houses--and blood and bones. It looks like the town was raided and pillaged, and they fear the raid isn't over. There are people in that city. And they are hungry. In this vicious horror novel, Jon Athan--the author of Cannibal Creek and Spit and Die--brings you into the early nineties to meet the old and new residents of Bobcat. WARNING: This novel contains graphic content. This book is not intended for those easily offended or appalled.




The Hunger


Book Description

"Supernatural suspense at its finest . . . It will scare the pants off you." —The New York Times Book Review Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers to the brink of madness. Though they dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos. As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, waiting for them in the mountains...and whether the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along.




Hungry Hill


Book Description

Grace Cavanaugh is intelligent, kind-and a bit of a wise ass. Lately, though, she's also something else: completely lost and just a little crazy. Her entire world has collapsed since Valentine's Day, when her husband, Michael, died unexpectedly after a romantic dinner celebrating their devotion. With her world turned upside down, she abandons the couple's gorgeous Victorian mansion and retreats to a cramped apartment with their three dogs in tow. Living in misery, barely finding energy to walk the dogs, Grace succumbs to her sorrow. Just as she hits bottom, a relative she hasn't seen in years calls out of the blue. Maggie Reilly, her eighty-six-year-old great aunt who still lives in the house she was born in, has troubles of her own. She desperately needs a family member to take care of her, so she reaches out to Grace hoping the bond they shared decades ago remains strong enough to bring her great niece back home. Hungry Hill is a story navigating the complexities of love in its many forms and how it endures. It explores our desire to belong to each other and to live a life of connectedness. It also reminds us to keep our sense of humor no matter what life brings, and to never underestimate the power of a great pair of shoes.