Search results for ""Atlantic Monthly Press""

In a rare blend of erudition and entertainment, acclaimed science journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell reveals the secret history and subtle politics behind the explosion of obesity. Shell traces the epidemic's inception in the Ice Age, its rise during the Industrial Revolution, and its growth through the early days of medicine and into modernity. She takes readers to the front lines of the struggle to come to grips with this baffling plague — from a children's food marketing convention, to the cutthroat race to find the obese gene, to a far-flung tropical island, where a horrifying outbreak of obesity has helped unravel the disorder's genetic and evolutionary roots. Offering an unflinching insider's look into the radical and controversial surgical and pharmacological approaches used to combat what drug makers have dubbed the trillion-dollar disease, Shell takes aim at the collusion of industry and government that lies behind the crises and shows conclusively that obesity is not a matter of gluttony or weak will, but of an increasingly greedy culture preying on vulnerable human biology. Gripping and provocative, The Hungry Gene is the unsettling saga of how the world got fat — and what we can do about it.

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Long an associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company, American playwright Richard Nelson has been praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic, and has been awarded the Olivier Award for his play Goodnight Children Everywhere and a Tony Award for his adaptation of James Joyce's "The Dead." Included in this volume are his latest play, Madame Melville, which received rave reviews during its London run starring Macaulay Culkin and Irene Jacob, and The General from America, which ponders the emotional conflicts that Benedict Arnold faced before deciding to hand over George Washington to the British. Madame Melville, set in Paris in 1966, before that city exploded in protest, presents the story of a fifteen-year-old American, Carl, and his beautiful teacher, Claudie Melville. The Daily Telegraph praised Madame Melville as "a play about art, music, friendship and the irrecoverable, unforgettable moment when an adolescent realizes that the world is full of wonder." The General from America provides a rich portrait of Benedict Arnold. Nelson's account of Arnold's search for love and country, and his discovery of only compromise and despair, will haunt readers and audiences.

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In 1890, Henrik Ibsen premiered Hedda Gabler, a play questioning the role of women in Victorian society. Some audiences have viewed Gabler as a woman driven to desperation simply because her world has turned out to be less charmed than she hoped. For others, she is a victim of her times, unwilling to devote herself, as was expected of her, to the duties of home. Jon Robin Baitz has brushed away the cobwebs, and he serves as an ambassador from Ibsen's age to our own, preserving the intensity of the original but translating it into a spare, contemporary idiom. His adaptation provides an opportunity to understand the play through a lens shaped by feminism and a theatrical tradition beginning with Beckett. Trapped by the conventions of her age, Gabler is both a martyr and a female incarnation of Vladimir and Estragon, longing for a salvation that will likely never arrive.

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Now available in a Grove paperback edition, The Shrine at Altamira by John L'Heureux has the simple shape and powerful impact of Greek tragedy. When Maria Corazon Alvarez meets Russell Whitaker at a school dance, she sees his blue eyes and solid American name as a ticket out of the ghetto into a better life. They dance, they touch, they tumble into a love so strong and elemental it should last forever. But gradually the balance shifts; he loves her more, she loves him less. When their son is born, Maria gives him all her love and Russell is pushed aside. Wild, obsessed, Russell runs mad and his desperate love becomes a fire that consumes them all.

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With Dead Men's Praise, Jacqueline Osherow gives us her fourth and most ambitious collection yet. Her hybrid inspiration ranges from Dante's terza rima, to free verse, to biblical psalms, while always keeping the voice of casual conversation. In the book's centerpiece, "Scattered Psalms," Osherow takes on the Hebrew psalms, the lyric heart of both the English and Jewish literary traditions out of which her writing comes. Combining the self-mocking inflections of Yiddish jokes with the pure lyric inspiration of biblical poetry, these poems range from Italian hill towns to Los Angeles contemporary art installations to the vanished Jewish world of the Ukraine, from imaginings of the future to recovery of the past. Her distinctive voice becomes a seemingly impossible fusion of the sublime and the down-to-earth.

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At once a biting satire and a taut, fast-paced thriller, Elvissey is the story of Isabel and John, a troubled couple who voyage from the year 2033 to a strangely altered 1954. They are on a desperate mission to kidnap the young Elvis Presley and bring him back to the present day to serve as a ready-made cult leader. He proves, however, to be a reluctant messiah, and things do not work out quite as planned.

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In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais's in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha's Vineyard for the exorbitant sum of $80,000. A little more than two miles down a poorly marked one-lane dirt road, the house was better termed a shack--it had no electricity or modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. Sitting on Tisbury Great Pond--well-stocked with oysters and crab for foraged dinners--the house faced the ocean and the sky, and though it was eventually replaced by a sturdier structure, the ethos remained the same: no heat, no TV, and no telephone. Instead, there were countless hours at the beach, meals cooked and savored with friends, nights talking under the stars, until in 2014, the house was sold. To the New Owners is Madeleine Blais's charming, evocative memoir of this house, and of the Vineyard itself--from the history of the island and its famous visitors to the ferry, the pie shops, the quirky charms and customs, and the abundant natural beauty. But more than that, this is an elegy for a special place. Many of us have one place that anchors our most powerful memories. For Blais, it was the Vineyard house--a retreat and a dependable pleasure that also measured changes in her family. As children were born and grew up, as loved ones aged and passed away, the house was a constant. And now, the house lives on in the hearts of those who cherished it, signifying endless summer.

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Lachlan Smith won widespread critical acclaim for his first novel in the Leo Maxwell series, Bear Is Broken, which won the Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel. In the tense and twist-filled third novel, Fox Is Framed, private attorney Leo Maxwell is forced to contend with a family drama that has haunted him--and his elder brother, Teddy--since childhood. Faced with evidence of stunning prosecutorial misconduct, a San Francisco judge has ordered a new trial for the Maxwell brothers' father, Lawrence, who has spent two decades in San Quentin for the murder of their mother. Teddy has always been convinced of their father's innocence, but Leo is less sure. The new case is almost derailed at the outset when a fellow inmate comes forward claiming that Lawrence confessed to the murder in prison. The snitch soon turns up dead, with Lawrence again the prime suspect. His doubts mounting, Leo teams up with hotshot attorney Nina Schuyler to defend Lawrence against murder charges both old and new. Working the streets while Nina handles the action in the courtroom, Leo must confront the darkness at the center of his life as he follows a trail of corruption and danger that leads to the very steps of City Hall.

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“Among the most indelible American novelists of the last hundred years. . . . [Harrison] remains at the height of his powers.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times“Trenchant and visionary.”—Ron Carlson, The New York Times Book ReviewA New York Times best-seller, enthusiastically received by critics and embraced by readers, The River Swimmer is Jim Harrison at his most memorable: two men, one young and one older, confronting inconvenient loves and the encroachment of urbanity on nature, written with freshness, abundant wit, and profound humanity. In “The Land of Unlikeness,” Clive—a failed artist, divorced and grappling with the vagaries of his declining years—reluctantly returns to his family’s Michigan farmhouse to visit his aging mother. The return to familiar territory triggers a jolt of renewal—of ardor for his high school sweetheart, of his relationship with his estranged daughter, and of his own lost love of painting. In “The River Swimmer,” Harrison ventures into the magical as an Upper Peninsula farm boy is irresistibly drawn to swimming as an escape, and sees otherworldly creatures in the water. Faced with the injustice and pressure of coming of age, he takes to the river and follows its siren song all the way across Lake Michigan.The River Swimmer is an exceptional reminder of why Jim Harrison is one of the most cherished and important writers at work today.“Two years have gone by since I first suggested to President Obama that he create a new Cabinet post, and appoint distinguished fiction writer Jim Harrison as secretary for quality of life. The president still has not responded to my suggestion. . . . [The River Swimmer] deepens and broadens [Harrison’s] already openhearted and smart-minded sense of the way we live now, and what we might do to improve it.”—Alan Cheuse, NPR

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A 2013 CASEY Award Finalist for Best Baseball Book of the Year and a Booklist Top Ten Sports Book of the Year When baseball swept America in the years after the Civil War, independent, semipro, and municipal leagues sprouted up everywhere. With civic pride on the line, rivalries were fierce and teams often signed ringers to play alongside the town dentist, insurance salesman, and teen prodigy. In drought-stricken Bismarck, North Dakota during the Great Depression, one of the most improbable teams in the history of baseball was assembled by one of the sport's most unlikely champions. A decade before Jackie Robinson broke into the Major Leagues, car dealer Neil Churchill signed the best players he could find, regardless of race, and fielded an integrated squad that took on all comers in spectacular fashion. Color Blind immerses the reader in the wild and wonderful world of early independent baseball, with its tough competition and its novelty. Dunkel traces the rise of the Bismarck squad, focusing on the 1935 season and the first National Semipro Tournament. This is an entertaining, must-read for anyone interested in the history of baseball. "A tale as fantastic as it is true." --Boston Globe

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Almost nine million people from all over the world flock to the Louvre in Paris every year to see its incomparable art collection. Yet few, if any, are aware of the remarkable history of that location and of the buildings themselves, and how they chronicle the history of Paris itself-a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly tells for the first time.Before the Louvre was a museum, it was a palace, and before that a fortress. But much earlier still, it was a place called le Louvre for reasons unknown. People had inhabited that spot for more than 6,000 years before King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there in 1191 to protect against English soldiers stationed in Normandy. Two centuries later, Charles V converted the fortress to one of his numerous royal palaces. After Louis XIV moved the royal residence to Versailles in 1682, the Louvre inherited the royal art collection, which then included the Mona Lisa, given to Francis by Leonardo da Vinci; just over a century later, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly established the Louvre as a museum to display the nation's treasures. Subsequent leaders of France, from Napoleon to Napoleon III to Francois Mitterand, put their stamp on the museum, expanding it into the extraordinary institution it has become.With expert detail and keen admiration, James Gardner links the Louvre's past to its glorious present, and vibrantly portrays how it has been a witness to French history - through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to this day - and home to a legendary collection whose diverse origins and back stories create a spectacular narrative that rivals the building's legendary stature.

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Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' (Daily Telegraph), the Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.1963.England is a country set to explode but Troy, now Britain's most senior police detective, is fighting his own battle against ill-health. While he is on medical leave, the Yard brings charges against an acquaintance of his, a hedonistic doctor with a penchant for voyeurism and young women, two of whom just happen to be sleeping with a senior man at the Foreign Office as well as a KGB agent.But on the eve of the verdict a curious double case of suicide drags Troy back into active duty. Beyond bedroom acrobatics, the secret affairs now stretch to double crosses and deals in the halls of power, not to mention murder.

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Shacochis returns to occupied Haiti in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul before sweeping across time and continents to unravel tangled knots of romance, espionage and vengeance. In riveting prose, Shacochis builds a complex and disturbing story about the coming of age of America in a pre-9/11 world. Set over fifty years and in four countries facing different wars, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul is National Book Award winner Bob Shacochis' magnum opus that brings to life, through the mystique and allure of history, an intricate portrait of catastrophic events that led up to the war on terror and the America we know today.

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