With My Back to the World


Book Description

Short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best Collection A new collection of poetry inspired by the work of Agnes Martin, exploring topics of feminism, art, depression, and grief, by the author of the prizewinning collection Obit. Yesterday I slung my depression on my back and went to the museum. I only asked four attendants where the Agnes painting was and the fifth one knew. I walked into the room and saw it right away. From afar, it was a large white square. With My Back to the World engages with the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin, the celebrated abstract artist, in ways that open up new modes of expression, expanding the scope of what art, poetry, and the human mind can do. Filled with surprise and insight, wit and profundity, the book explores the nature of the self, of existence, life and death, grief and depression, time and space. Strikingly original, fluidly strange, Victoria Chang’s new collection is a book that speaks to how we see and are seen.




With My Back to the World


Book Description

In an ambitious, yet intimate novel set in Taos, New Mexico, and Hamilton, Ontario, Sally Cooper explores unexpected motherhood, creativity, race, love and faith. With My Back to the World tells the stories of three women: Rudie, who is editing a documentary in Hamilton in 2010; historical artist Agnes Martin, who decides in 1974 after seven years' exile in New Mexico to begin painting again; and Ellen, a black woman burying her husband in 1870 on an Ontario homestead. Each of these women is waiting for the arrival of an unexpected child and their interconnected stories explore how society's, and our own, ideas of what it means to be a woman, a mother and an artist change over time. Evocative and introspective, With My Back to the World tells the complicated stories of how different women find faith in themselves in extraordinary circumstances.




The World at My Back


Book Description

"Books written out of great emotional distress are ... rarely great literature. Thomas Melle's [The World at My Back] is great literature because he pulls it off without a single false note." —Deutschlandfunk (German National Radio) A FINALIST FOR THE GERMAN BOOK PRIZE • TRANSLATED INTO EIGHTEEN LANGUAGES Addicted to culture, author Thomas Melle has built up an impressive personal library. His heart is in these books, and he loves to feel them at his back, their promise and challenge, as he writes. But in the middle of a violent dissociative episode, when they become ballast to his increasingly manic self, he disperses almost overnight what had taken decades to gather. Nor is this all he loses: descending further into an incomprehensible madness, he loses friendships and his career as a novelist and celebrated playwright, but the most savage cruelty is that he no longer either knows or understands himself. Vulnerable and claustrophobic, shattering and profoundly moving, Thomas Melle’s The World at My Back is a book dedicated to the impossibility of reclaiming what has been lost, its lines both a prayer and reminder that, on the other side of madness, other possibilities await.




Chickenhawk


Book Description

A true, bestselling story from the battlefield that faithfully portrays the horror, the madness, and the trauma of the Vietnam War More than half a million copies of Chickenhawk have been sold since it was first published in 1983. Now with a new afterword by the author and photographs taken by him during the conflict, this straight-from-the-shoulder account tells the electrifying truth about the helicopter war in Vietnam. This is Robert Mason’s astounding personal story of men at war. A veteran of more than one thousand combat missions, Mason gives staggering descriptions that cut to the heart of the combat experience: the fear and belligerence, the quiet insights and raging madness, the lasting friendships and sudden death—the extreme emotions of a "chickenhawk" in constant danger. "Very simply the best book so far about Vietnam." -St. Louis Post-Dispatch




My Back Pages


Book Description

My Back Pages Volume II is a collection of 60 funny, insightful, and often poignant columns penned over the past few years by Daryl Fisher for his hometown newspaper, the West Sacramento News-Ledger. His columns have received statewide attention, including a prestigious Gold Medal Award from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Fisher's columns talk positively about family, friends, and community, the three things which he believes connect us all and give us the comforting illusion that we are not alone in the world. He writes about the fun and games of raising children, the love of all creatures great and small, politics, and his friends and neighbors. Sometimes a column also becomes a eulogy, a way of saying goodbye to those who have touched and enriched his life. It is one of those rare books that you can pick up, turn to any page, and find yourself there.




Back in the World


Book Description

To American soldiers in Vietnam, "back in the world" meant America and safety. To Tobias Wolff's characters, Back in the World is where lives that have veered out of control just might become normal again. Unfortunately, the men and women in these gripping, pungent, and wonderfully skewed stories have only the vaguest notion of what normal is. A gentle priest finds himself in a Vegas hotel with a hysterical, sun-burned stranger. A show-biz hopeful undergoes a dubious audition in a hearse speeding across the California desert. An aging soldier is distracted from a night of philandering by a gun-toting neighbor and a suicidal enlisted man. As he moves among these unfortunates, Wolff observes the disparity between their realities and their dreams, in ten stories of exhilarating lucidity and grace. Stories included are: "The Missing Person," "Say Yes," "The Poor Are Always With Us," "Sister," "Soldier's Joy," "Desert Breakdown," "Our Story Begins," "Leviathan," and "The Rich Brother." "Terrific...The magic of his fiction cannot be explained. It is the ancient art of the master storyteller."--Tim O'Brien




Forbidden World


Book Description

Chris and Liz arrive on a desperate mission to explore a dead world. What they find could change the universe. Earth has powerful enemies. It needs powerful weapons to defend itself. Alien races, the Don and the Ponohejon are planning to destroy humanity. Earth military and scientists cobble together a space craft from two different alien ships. They give it an experimental faster than light drive that none of the other alien races have. They entrust this precious vessel of incalculable value to two civilians. And one spy. Sending them to a long extinct alien race’s home world. Two thousand years ago, the world of Dendon was home to the most advanced race in the galaxy. Someone murdered them. An entire race. An entire world. The alien races of SixUnion declared the planet forbidden to all. Now Earth’s only hope may be a dangerous mission to find Dendon’s most powerful weapons. Both Chris and Liz carry pieces of ancient Dendon technology within them. Will it give them the edge to face down what awaits on the forbidden world? The people of Dendon may be dead. Their technology isn’t. Not at all. It still protects a dead world of dust and wind and empty buildings. The secrets of a long dead alien race await in the third adventure in the Star Ascension series.




Bouncing Back


Book Description

While resilience is innate in the brain, our capacity for it can be impaired by our conditioning. Unhelpful patterns of response are learned over time and can become fixed in our neural circuitry. What neuroscience now shows is that what previously seemed hardwired can be rewired.




In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 21


Book Description

The time has come at long last. Touya's set to get married to his nine blushing brides. The invites have been sent, the food is all accounted for, and the entire nation of Brunhild trembles with anticipation. But will he make it through the big day unscathed? Not if his divine retinue has anything to say about it! And of course, there's the small matter of his honeymoon... Bringing nine spouses through a spatial tear for a vacation on planet Earth sounds like a novel enough idea. What could possibly go wrong? Wedding bells ring, signaling a tale of swords, sorcery, and smiles!




Take Back Your Marriage


Book Description

All couples walk to the altar dreaming of happily-ever-after, but many forces in our society work against healthy lifelong commitment. Renowned family therapist William J. Doherty reveals how cracks can develop in even a rock-solid marriage, and what steps you can take to keep your love strong. Learn ways to break free of common traps like confusing desires with needs, comparing your spouse to your fantasies of other relationships, or becoming overtime parents instead of full-time partners. You'll get suggestions for creating relationship rituals--from mundane to celebratory, sexy to silly--that build closeness and connection every day. The updated second edition incorporates Dr. Doherty's ongoing experience counseling couples, plus the latest information on marriage and health, how divorce affects kids, the impact of new technologies on family life, and more. Winner--Best Self-Help Book, ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards