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"Rachel Morgan's frank and incisive history begins with Richard Wetherill's "discovery" of Mesa Verde in Colorado in 1888. Subsequent expeditions by amateurs, looters, and budding professional archaeologists abetted the devastation of Indigenous sites throughout the Southwest. These expeditions became the proving grounds for different conceptions of what archaeology should be and how it should be practiced. Ultimately, revulsion at the work of nineteenth-century explorers led to more rigorous and ethical norms, as well as federal regulation, but the core issues of how we ought best to engage with the evidence and people of the past remain live ones today. Morgan, an archaeologist, knows well the field's history of racism and unethical behavior, and she is both unsparing and even-handed in assessing what happened in the Southwest and how it informs relations among people-and with the planet-today"--
"The new economics of love and marriage-and who benefits. The realities of single parenting in the US have long carried a connotation of hardship-not just in finances, but in the wrenching day-to-day challenges of parenting without a net. As marriage rates in the US continue to drop, and as single-parent households become increasingly concentrated at the lower end of the income spectrum, it begs the question: what does all this mean for a country and a society already dogged by inequality and the weight of racial discrimination? The Two-Parent Privilege examines the emerging role of marriage in the United States. Weaving data and observations drawn from across the social sciences, economist Melissa Kearney explores how the concentration of marriage among the affluent has made the institution of marriage itself a propagator of American inequality--one that may signal the end of American economic mobility. Kearney's work is a trenchant, sometimes uncomfortable, but deeply necessary critical look at how the makeup of our households are charting our path ahead"--
Over three million years ago, our ancient ancestors realized that rocks could be broken into sharp-edged objects for slicing meat, making the first knives. This discovery resulted in a good meal, and eventually changed the fate of our species and our planet. With So Much Stuff, archaeologist Chip Colwell sets out to investigate why humankind went from self-sufficient primates to nonstop shoppers, from needing nothing to needing everything. Along the way, he uncovers spectacular and strange points around the world--an Italian cave with the world's first known painted art, a Hong Kong skyscraper where a priestess channels the gods, and a mountain of trash that rivals the Statue of Liberty. Through these examples, Colwell shows how humanity took three leaps that led to stuff becoming inseparable from our lives, inspiring a love affair with things that may lead to our downfall. Now, as landfills brim and oceans drown in trash, Colwell issues a timely call to reevaluate our relationship with the things that both created and threaten to undo our overstuffed planet.
A collection of essays by American art critic Dave Hickey, nicknamed "The Bad Boy of Art Criticism." When Dave Hickey was twelve, he rode the surfer's dream: the perfect wave. And, like so many things in life we long for, it didn't quite turn out--he shot the pier and dashed himself against the rocks of Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach, which nearly killed him. Hickey went on to develop a career as one of America's foremost critical iconoclasts, a trusted no-nonsense voice commenting on the worlds of art and culture. Perfect Wave brings together essays on a wide range of subjects from throughout Hickey's career, displaying his breadth of interest and powerful insight into what makes art work, or not, and why we care. With Hickey as our guide, we travel to Disneyland and Vegas, London and Venice. We discover the genius of Karen Carpenter and Waylon Jennings, learn why Robert Mitchum matters more than Jimmy Stewart, and see how the stillness of Antonioni speaks to us today. Never slow to judge--or to surprise us in doing so--Hickey relates his wincing disappointment in the later career of his early hero Susan Sontag and shows us the appeal to our commonality that we've been missing in Norman Rockwell. Bookended by previously unpublished personal essays that offer a new glimpse into Hickey's own life--including the aforementioned conclusion to his surfing career--Perfect Wave is a welcome addition to the Hickey canon.
Shakespeare famously asserted that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," and that's as true for common garden roses as it is for Megacorax, a genus of evening primroses. Though it may not sound like it, Megacorax was actually christened in honor of famed American botanist Peter Raven, its name a play on the Latin words for "great raven." In this lush and lively book, celebrated botanist Sandra Knapp explores the people whose names have been immortalized in plant genera, presenting little-known stories about both the featured plants and their eponyms alongside photographs and botanical drawings from the collections of London's Natural History Museum. Readers will see familiar plants in a new light after learning the tales of heroism, inspiration, and notoriety that led to their naming. Take, for example, nineteenth-century American botanist Alice Eastwood, after whom the yellow aster--Eastwoodia elegans--is named. Eastwood was a pioneering plant collector who also singlehandedly saved irreplaceable specimens from the California Academy of Sciences during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Or more recently, the fern genus Gaga, named for the pop star and actress Lady Gaga, whose verdant heart-shaped ensemble at the 2010 Grammy Awards bore a striking resemblance to a giant fern gametophyte. Knapp's subjects range from Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (Darwinia), and legendary French botanist Pierre Magnol--who lends his name to the magnolia tree--to US founding figures like George Washington (Washingtonia) and Benjamin Franklin (Franklinia). Including granular details on the taxonomy and habitats of thirty plants alongside its vibrant illustrations, this book is sure to entertain and enlighten any plant fan.
Explorer and geographer Alastair Bonnett takes us on a thought-provoking tour of the world's most fascinating islands, featuring hand-drawn maps, color photos, and stories from his travels. There are millions of islands on our planet. New islands are being built at an unprecedented rate, for tourism and territorial ambition. Many are also disappearing, besieged by rising sea levels. The story of our world's islands is one of the great dramas of our time, and it is playing out around the planet--islands are sprouting or being submerged everywhere from the South China Sea to the Atlantic. Elsewhere is the story of this strange and mesmerizing planetary spectacle. In this book, explorer and geographer Alastair Bonnett takes us on a thought-provoking tour of the world's most fascinating islands. He traveled the globe to provide a firsthand look at numerous islands, sketching a vivid likeness of each one he visited. From a "crannog," an ancient artificial island in a Scottish loch, to the militarized artificial islands China is building; from the disappearing islands that remain the home of native Central Americans to the ritzy new islands of Dubai; from Hong Kong to the Isles of Scilly--all have compelling stories to tell. As we journey around the world with Bonnett, he addresses urgent contemporary issues such as climate change, economic inequality, and the changing balance of world power as reflected in the fates of islands. Along the way, we also learn about the many ways islands rise and fall, the long and little-known history of human island-building and the prospect that the inland hills and valleys will one day be archipelagos. Featuring Bonnett's charming hand-drawn maps and 33 full-color photos, Elsewhere is a captivating travel book for any armchair adventurer.
"First published in 2021 by the Natural History Museum, ... London."--Title page verso.
The English language is vast enough to supply a word for every occasion--and this linguistic "wunderkammer" is here to prove precisely that. Each day has its own dedicated entry, on which a curious or notable eventÐand an equally curious or notable wordÐare explored.8;are explored.
Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect. Cultural liberation and musical innovation. Pyrotechnics, bottle service, bass drops, and molly. Electronic dance music has been a vital force for more than three decades now, and has undergone transformation upon transformation as it has taken over the world. In this searching, lyrical account of dance music culture worldwide, Matthew Collin takes stock of its highest highs and lowest lows across its global trajectory. Through firsthand reportage and interviews with clubbers and DJs, Collin documents the itinerant musical form from its underground beginnings in New York, Chicago, and Detroit in the 1980s, to its explosions in Ibiza and Berlin, to today's mainstream music scenes in new frontiers like Las Vegas, Shanghai, and Dubai. Collin shows how its dizzying array of genres-from house, techno, and garage to drum and bass, dubstep, and psytrance-have given voice to locally specific struggles. For so many people in so many different places, electronic dance music has been caught up in the search for free cultural space: forming the soundtrack to liberation for South African youth after Apartheid; inspiring a psychedelic party culture in Israel; offering fleeting escape from-and at times into-corporatization in China; and even undergirding a veritable "independent republic" in a politically contested slice of the former Soviet Union. Full of admiration for the possibilities the music has opened up all over the world, Collin also unflinchingly probes where this utopianism has fallen short, whether the culture maintains its liberating possibilities today, and where it might go in the future.
From Ivy: We are sleeping less and less: statistics show that insomnia has reached pandemic proportions, and costs healthcare providers billions. Most of us spend a third of our lives asleep--our bodies insist on sleep; without it, we die. But why we sleep still remains relatively mysterious. The Science of Sleep explains the elements of the sleep state and explores the various sleep disorders and how their available treatments work. By offering an accessible account of sleep science, the book allows the reader to assess their relationship with sleep and craft their own approach to having a restful night with the maximum physical return.
"Family history begins with missing persons," Alison Light writes in Common People. We wonder about those we've lost, and those we never knew, about the long skein that led to us, and to here, and to now. So we start exploring. Most of us, however, give up a few generations back. We run into a gap, get embarrassed by a ne'er-do-well, or simply find our ancestors are less glamorous than we'd hoped. That didn't stop Alison Light: in the last weeks of her father's life, she embarked on an attempt to trace the history of her family as far back as she could reasonably go. The result is a clear-eyed, fascinating, frequently moving account of the lives of everyday people, of the tough decisions and hard work, the good luck and bad breaks, that chart the course of a life. Light's forebears-servants, sailors, farm workers-were among the poorest, traveling the country looking for work; they left few lasting marks on the world. But through her painstaking work in archives, and her ability to make the people and struggles of the past come alive, Light reminds us that "every life, even glimpsed through the chinks of the census, has its surprises and secrets." What she did for the servants of Bloomsbury in her celebrated Mrs. Woolf and the Servants Light does here for her own ancestors, and, by extension, everyone's: draws their experiences from the shadows of the past and helps us understand their lives, estranged from us by time yet inextricably interwoven with our own. Family history, in her hands, becomes a new kind of public history." --
The latest volume in the Supreme Court Review series. Since it first appeared in 1960, the Supreme Court Review has won acclaim for providing a sustained and authoritative survey of the implications of the Court's most significant decisions. SCR is an in-depth annual critique of the Supreme Court and its work, analyzing the origins, reforms, and modern interpretations of American law. SCR is written by and for legal academics, judges, political scientists, journalists, historians, economists, policy planners, and sociologists.
Hardly a week passes without some high-profile court case that features intellectual property at its center. But how did the belief that one could own an idea come about? And how did that belief change the way humankind lives and works? William Rosen, author of Justinian's Flea, seeks to answer these questions and more with The Most Powerful Idea in the World. A lively and passionate study of the engineering and scientific breakthroughs that led to the steam engine, this book argues that the very notion of intellectual property drove not only the invention of the steam engine but also the entire Industrial Revolution: history's first sustained era of economic improvement. To do so, Rosen conjures up an eccentric cast of characters, including the legal philosophers who enabled most the inventive society in millennia, and the scientists and inventors-Thomas Newcomen, Robert Boyle, and James Watt-who helped to create and perfect the steam engine over the centuries. With wit and wide-ranging curiosity, Rosen explores the power of creativity, capital, and collaboration in the brilliant engineering of the steam engine and how this power source, which fueled factories, ships, and railroads, changed human history. Deeply informative and never dull, Rosen's account of one of the most important inventions made by humans is a rollicking ride through history, with careful scholarship and fast-paced prose in equal measure.
Presented in a portable, flexible-bound paperback format with an elastic closure, Portable Latin for Gardeners is a distillation of our previous co-publication with Quid, Latin for Gardeners by Lorraine Harrison in fall 2012. In order to cultivate spectacular gardens one need not necessarily posses an appreciation for Loeb editions, but knowing those esoteric names behind the rose or hellebore in Latin brings about a greater appreciation to accompany your dirty, earth-smelling fingernails. Without that knowledge, you might acquire a hellebores foetidus without realizing the fetid smell it will emit, or that the Potentilla reptans you hoped would stand tall as a sentinel will only creep along as ground cover. Having a basic understanding of Latin before trips to the garden store or botanic garden is similar to possessing some knowledge of French before traveling to France--it enriches the entire experience. But with this portable edition, there is no need to fear the forgetful mind as you can bring it to the garden store or botanic garden with you. Portable Latin for Gardeners is a great reference work intended for gardeners and green-thumbs alike or as wonderful gift for them as well.
In A Poet's Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie brings her decades of expertise as poet, critic, and director of the creative writing program at Northwestern University to bear in a comprehensive reference work for any writer wishing to better understand poetry. Detailing the formal concepts of poetry and methods of poetic analysis, she shows how the craft of writing can guide the art of reading poems. Using examples from the major traditions of lyric and meditative poetry in English from the medieval period to the present, Kinzie considers the sounds and rhythms of poetry along with the ideas and thought-units within poems. Kinzie also shares her own successful classroom tactics that encourage readers to approach a poem as if it were provisional. The three parts of A Poet's Guide to Poetry lead the reader through a carefully planned introduction to the ways we understand poetry. The first section provides careful, step-by-step instruction to familiarize students with the formal elements of poems, from the most obvious feature through the most subtle. The second part carefully examines meter and rhythm, as well as providing a theoretical and practical overview of free verse. The final section offers helpful chapters on writing in form. Rounding out the volume are writing exercises for beginning and advanced writers, a dictionary of poetic terms, and a bibliography of further reading. For this new edition, Kinzie has carefully reworked the introductory material and first chapter, as well as amended the annotated bibliography to include the most recent works of criticism. The updated guide also contains revised exercises and adjustments throughout the text to make the work as lucid and accessible as possible.
"Once you've become a part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real." Ernest Hemingway once said of Nelson Algren's writing that "you should not read it if you cannot take a punch." The prose poem, Chicago: City on the Make, filled with language that swings and jabs and stuns, lives up to those words. In this sixtieth anniversary edition, Algren presents 120 years of Chicago history through the lens of its "nobodies nobody knows" the tramps, hustlers, aging bar fighters, freed death-row inmates, and anonymous working stiffs who prowl its streets. Upon its original publication in 1951, Algren's Chicago: City on the Make was scorned by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce and local journalists for its gritty portrayal of the city and its people, one that boldly defied City Hall's business and tourism initiatives. Yet the book captures the essential dilemma of Chicago: the dynamic tension between the city's breathtaking beauty and its utter brutality, its boundless human energy and its stifling greed and violence. The sixtieth anniversary edition features historic Chicago photos and annotations on everything from defunct slang to Chicagoans, famous and obscure, to what the Black Sox scandal was and why it mattered. More accessible than ever, this is, as Studs Terkel says, "the best book about Chicago."
Since Latin became the standard language for plant naming in the eighteenth century, it has been intrinsically linked with botany. And while mastery of the classical language may not be a prerequisite for tending perennials, all gardeners stand to benefit from learning a bit of Latin and its conventions in the field. Without it, they might buy a Hellebores foetidus and be unprepared for its fetid smell, or a Potentilla reptans with the expectation that it will stand straight as a sentinel rather than creep along the ground. An essential addition to the gardener's library, this colorful, fully illustrated book details the history of naming plants, provides an overview of Latin naming conventions, and offers guidelines for pronunciation. Readers will learn to identify Latin terms that indicate the provenance of a given plant and provide clues to its color, shape, fragrance, taste, behavior, functions, and more. Full of expert instruction and practical guidance, Latin for Gardeners will allow novices and green thumbs alike to better appreciate the seemingly esoteric names behind the plants they work with, and to expertly converse with fellow enthusiasts. Soon they will realize that having a basic understanding of Latin before trips to the nursery or botanic garden is like possessing some knowledge of French before traveling to Paris; it enriches the whole experience.
Most of us think of plants as belonging to one big family, but they don't. There are actually hundreds of different plant families, which botanists have grouped together using what they know of their family histories and genealogy, to bring some sense and order to more than quarter of million different plant species. Using this knowledge, we can teach ourselves to see similarities of characteristics between plants and get a pretty good idea of which family they belong to. GENEALOGY FOR GARDERNERS presents the enormous diversity shown by the many families of plants in a way that is easy to understand, whether one's interest lies in natural history or with horticulture. The superb illustrations make it exceptionally attractive and accessible book. Information boxes on most pages highlight interesting facts, unexpected relationships, botanical curiosities, and notable members of plant family groups. Readers can make sense of the enormous biological diversity of the plant kingdom, by piecing together family likenesses and genealogical connections.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
"Whom the gods wish to destroy," writes Cyril Connolly, "they first call promising." First published in 1938 and long out of print, Enemies of Promise, an "inquiry into the problem of how to write a book that lasts ten years," tests the boundaries of criticism, journalism, and autobiography with the blistering prose that became Connolly's trademark. Connolly here confronts the evils of domesticity, politics, drink, and advertising as well as novelists such as Joyce, Proust, Hemingway, and Faulkner in essays that remain fresh and penetrating to this day. "A fine critic, compulsive traveler, and candid autobiographer. . . . [Connolly] lays down the law for all writers who wanted to count. . . . He had imagination and decisive images flashed with the speed of wit in his mind."-V. S. Pritchett, New York Review of Books "Anyone who writes, or wants to write, will find something on just about every single page that either endorses a long-held prejudice or outrages, and that makes it a pretty compelling read. . . . You end up muttering back at just about every ornately constructed pensée that Connolly utters, but that's one of the joys of this book."-Nick Hornby, The Believer "A remarkable book."-Anthony Powell
Whether charting the moments before or after work, the unspoken emotions accompanying separation and reunion, or the necessity of a grocery store as a "last place" for people to engage publicly, Laton Carter's poems attend to the parts of our lives that are easiest to ignore, like solitary highway drivers passing in their cars and the unspoken link binding people together. In poem after poem, the speaker relentlessly pulls the reader to spaces, both physical and emotional--fearful of the inability to bridge the gap between ideas, places, and individuals, yet unable to avoid trying. Mining the territory of responsibility and longing, these poems remind us that the minutiae and variation in our private lives combine to serve up a larger public identity. An impressively mature first collection of poems, "Leaving" is a bold book that eschews the superfluous, leaving only that which is most essential and meaningful.
Your smile.There wasn't one.You never smiled. Born in Tehran but living in Germany, the eminent writer SAID has suffered two forms of exile. Force to leave Iran for political reasons, he was also separated from his mother shortly after his birth when his parents divorced. At the age of forty-three, however, SAID received word that his mother was traveling abroad and wanted to see him. Landscapes of a Distant Mother is the account of their wrenching reunion. A memoir of longing and loss, the book offers a haunting portrait of a son's broken relationship with his mother and the Islamic dictatorship that shadows both their lives. Landscapes of a Distant Mother gives English-speaking readers an introduction to one of Europe's most important immigrant writers. Unsentimental and spare, the book chronicles the discomfiting sensation of viewing one's mother as a stranger and all the psychological implications of their mutual disappointment. SAID's distance from his mother--whom he describes almost clinically, with her "particular way of speaking, the style laced with religious formulas, inclined to emotionalism, self-pity and expletives"--becomes a measure of the alienation he feels from everything around him. His book gives voice to the full meaning of modern exile--its political force, profound sadness, and perpetual yearning.
Set in a castle and on its grounds in Brittany, The Little Field of Self is one long poem comprised of individual poems that articulate the essence of devotion and the conflict within the devoted. With surprising inventiveness and technical skill, and without ornamentation, self-consciousness, or self-display, Doreen Gildroy has forged an original poetic style that renders inner being authentically and convincingly.
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