Search results for ""Los Angeles Review of Books""

Winner of the Bancroft PrizeLouisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the YearA Publishers Weekly Book of the Year“The main thrust of Horowitz’s account is to make us understand Katrina—the civic calamity, not the storm itself—as a consequence of decades of bad decisions by humans, not an unanticipated caprice of nature.”—Nicholas Lemann, New YorkerHurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, but the decisions that caused the disaster can be traced back nearly a century. After the city weathered a major hurricane in 1915, its Sewerage and Water Board believed that developers could safely build housing near the Mississippi, on lowlands that relied on significant government subsidies to stay dry. When the flawed levee system failed, these were the neighborhoods that were devastated.The flood line tells one important story about Katrina, but it is not the only story that matters. Andy Horowitz investigates the response to the flood, when policymakers made it easier for white New Orleanians to return home than for African Americans. He explores how the profits and liabilities created by Louisiana’s oil industry have been distributed unevenly, prompting dreams of abundance and a catastrophic land loss crisis that continues today.“Masterful…Disasters have the power to reveal who we are, what we value, what we’re willing—and unwilling—to protect.”—New York Review of Books“If you want to read only one book to better understand why people in positions of power in government and industry do so little to address climate change, even with wildfires burning and ice caps melting and extinctions becoming a daily occurrence, this is the one.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

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An Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal WinnerA Progressive Book of the YearA TechCrunch Favorite Read of the Year“Deeply researched and thoughtful.”—Nature“An extended exercise in myth busting.”—Outside“A critique of both popular and scientific understandings of the hormone, and how they have been used to explain, or even defend, inequalities of power.”—The ObserverTestosterone is a familiar villain, a ready culprit for everything from stock market crashes to the overrepresentation of men in prisons. But your testosterone level doesn’t actually predict your appetite for risk, sex drive, or athletic prowess. It isn’t the biological essence of manliness—in fact, it isn’t even a male sex hormone. So what is it, and how did we come to endow it with such superhuman powers?T’s story begins when scientists first went looking for the chemical essence of masculinity. Over time, it provided a handy rationale for countless behaviors—from the boorish to the enviable. Testosterone focuses on what T does in six domains: reproduction, aggression, risk-taking, power, sports, and parenting, addressing heated debates like whether high-testosterone athletes have a natural advantage as well as disagreements over what it means to be a man or woman.“This subtle, important book forces rethinking not just about one particular hormone but about the way the scientific process is embedded in social context.”—Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Behave“A beautifully written and important book. The authors present strong and persuasive arguments that demythologize and defetishize T as a molecule containing quasi-magical properties, or as exclusively related to masculinity and males.”—Los Angeles Review of Books“Provides fruitful ground for understanding what it means to be human, not as isolated physical bodies but as dynamic social beings.”—Science

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“This comedy of errors is a page-turner, where a mail-order bride service, enough love triangles to boggle the mind, a stolen Egon Schiele painting, and a devastating fire lead the worlds of Santa Barbara and Chișinău to collide.” —Los Angeles Review of Books An exhilaratingly comical, crosscultural debut novel, The Wife Who Wasn’t brings together an eccentric community from the hills of Santa Barbara, California, and a family of Russians from Chișinău, the capital of Moldova. It starts in the late 1990s, after the fall of communism, and has at its center the mail-order marriage between a California man (Sammy) and a Russian woman (Tania) who comes to America, which engenders a series of hilarious cultural misunderstandings. The novel’s four parts take place alternately in California and Moldova, and comprise short chapters whose point of view moves seamlessly between that of the omniscient narrator and that of various characters. Delivered in arresting prose, both realities—late 90s, bohemian/hipster California and postcommunist Moldova—thus come together from opposite points of view. Above all, this novel is a comedy of manners that depicts the cultural (and personality) clash between Tania and Sammy, Anna (Sammy’s teenage daughter) and Irina, and Bill (Sammy’s neighbor) and Serioja (Tania’s brother). It is also a comedy of errors in the tradition of playful, multiple love triangles. The novel reaches a shocking climax involving a stolen Egon Schiele painting and alluding to the real history of East Mountain Drive, whose bohemian community was destroyed in the 2008 “Tea Fire.” A literary tour de force and a rollicking satire of both suburban America and urban Eastern Europe, is a must for fans of Gary Schteyngart (The Russian Debutante's Handbook), Keith Gessen (A Terrible Country), Ludmila Ulitskaya (), and Lara Vapnyar (Divide Me By Zero).

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FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Named a notable book of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Time, and The Guardian As featured by The Daily Show, NPR, PBS, CBC, Time, VIBE, Entertainment Weekly, Well-Read Black Girl, and Chris Hayes, "incisive, witty, and provocative essays" (Publishers Weekly) by one of the "most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time" (Rebecca Traister) “Thick is sure to become a classic.” —The New York Times Book Review In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed—is unapologetically "thick": deemed "thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less," McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work. Thick "transforms narrative moments into analyses of whiteness, black misogyny, and status-signaling as means of survival for black women" (Los Angeles Review of Books) with "writing that is as deft as it is amusing" (Darnell L. Moore). This "transgressive, provocative, and brilliant" (Roxane Gay) collection cements McMillan Cottom's position as a public thinker capable of shedding new light on what the "personal essay" can do. She turns her chosen form into a showcase for her critical dexterity, investigating everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies. Collected in an indispensable volume that speaks to the everywoman and the erudite alike, these unforgettable essays never fail to be "painfully honest and gloriously affirming" and hold "a mirror to your soul and to that of America" (Dorothy Roberts).

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From the award-winning author of Soldier Girls and Just Like Us, an “extraordinary” (The Denver Post) account of refugee teenagers at a Denver public high school and their compassionate teacher and “a reminder that in an era of nativism, some Americans are still breaking down walls and nurturing the seeds of the great American experiment” (The New York Times Book Review).The Newcomers follows the lives of twenty-two immigrant teenagers throughout the course of the 2015-2016 school year as they land at South High School in Denver, Colorado. These newcomers, from fourteen to nineteen years old, come from nations convulsed by drought or famine or war. Many come directly from refugee camps, after experiencing dire forms of cataclysm. Some arrive alone, having left or lost every other member of their original family. At the center of their story is Mr. Williams, their dedicated and endlessly resourceful teacher of English Language Acquisition. If Mr. Williams does his job right, the newcomers will leave his class at the end of the school year with basic English skills and new confidence, their foundation for becoming Americans and finding a place in their new home. Ultimately, “The Newcomers reads more like an anthropologist’s notebook than a work of reportage: Helen Thorpe not only observes, she chips in her two cents and participates. Like her, we’re moved and agitated by this story of refugee teenagers…Donald Trump’s gross slander of refugees and immigrants is countered on every page by the evidence of these students’ lives and characters” (Los Angeles Review of Books). With the US at a political crossroads around questions of immigration, multiculturalism, and America’s role on the global stage, Thorpe presents a fresh and nuanced perspective. The Newcomers is “not only an intimate look at lives immigrant teens live, but it is a primer on the art and science of new language acquisition and a portrait of ongoing and emerging global horrors and the human fallout that arrives on our shores” (USA TODAY).

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Finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award "The magnificence of Hold It 'Til It Hurts is not only in the prose and the story but also in the book's great big beating heart. These complex and compelling characters and the wizardry of Johnson's storytelling will dazzle and move you from first page to last. Novels don't teach us how to live but Hold It 'Til It Hurts will make you hush and wonder."--Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead "This rich and sophisticated first novel brings together pleasures rarely found in one book: Hold It 'Til It Hurts is a novel about war that goes in search of passionate love, a dreamy thriller, a sprawling mystery, a classical quest for a lost brother in which the shadowy quarry is clearly the seeker's own self, and a meditation on family and racial identity that makes its forerunners in American fiction look innocent by comparison."--Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award winner for Lord of Misrule When Achilles Conroy and his brother Troy return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, their white mother presents them with the key to their past: envelopes containing details about their respective birth parents. After Troy disappears, Achilles--always his brother's keeper--embarks on a harrowing journey in search of Troy, an experience that will change him forever. Heartbreaking, intimate, and at times disturbing, Hold It 'Til It Hurts is a modern-day odyssey through war, adventure, disaster, and love, and explores how people who do not define themselves by race make sense of a world that does. T. Geronimo Johnson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Best New American Voices, Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Illuminations, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Johnson teaches writing at the University of California-Berkeley. Hold It 'Til It Hurts is his first book.

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"Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Loaded is like a blast of fresh air. She is no fan of guns or of our absurdly permissive laws surrounding them. But she does not merely take the liberal side of the familiar debate."--Adam Hochschild, The New York Review of Books"If . . . anyone at all really wants to 'get to the root causes of gun violence in America,' they will need to start by coming to terms with even a fraction of what Loaded proposes."—Los Angeles Review of Books"Her analysis, erudite and unrelenting, exposes blind spots not just among conservatives, but, crucially, among liberals as well. . . . As a portrait of the deepest structures of American violence, Loaded is an indispensable book."—The New RepublicLoaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, is a deeply researched—and deeply disturbing—history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present. As historian and educator Dunbar-Ortiz explains, in order to understand the current obstacles to gun control, we must understand the history of U.S. guns, from their role in the "settling of America" and the early formation of the new nation, and continuing up to the present.Praise for Loaded:"Dunbar-Ortiz's argument will be disturbing and unfamiliar to most readers, but her evidence is significant and should not be ignored."—Publishers Weekly" . . . gun love is as American as apple pie—and that those guns have often been in the hands of a powerful white majority to subjugate minority natives, slaves, or others who might stand in the way of the broadest definition of Manifest Destiny."—Kirkus Reviews"Trigger warning! This is a superb and subtle book, not an intellectual safe space for confirming your preconceptions—whatever those might be—but rather a deeply necessary provocation."—Christian Parenti, author of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis

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The International Bestseller'With clarity and compassion, DiAngelo allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to "bad people." In doing so, she moves our national discussions forward. This is a necessary book for all people invested in societal change' Claudia RankineAnger. Fear. Guilt. Denial. Silence. These are the ways in which ordinary white people react when it is pointed out to them that they have done or said something that has - unintentionally - caused racial offence or hurt. After, all, a racist is the worst thing a person can be, right? But these reactions only serve to silence people of colour, who cannot give honest feedback to 'liberal' white people lest they provoke a dangerous emotional reaction. Robin DiAngelo coined the term 'White Fragility' in 2011 to describe this process and is here to show us how it serves to uphold the system of white supremacy. Using knowledge and insight gained over decades of running racial awareness workshops and working on this idea as a Professor of Whiteness Studies, she shows us how we can start having more honest conversations, listen to each other better and react to feedback with grace and humility. It is not enough to simply hold abstract progressive views and condemn the obvious racists on social media - change starts with us all at a practical, granular level, and it is time for all white people to take responsibility for relinquishing their own racial supremacy.'By turns mordant and then inspirational, an argument that powerful forces and tragic histories stack the deck fully against racial justice alongside one that we need only to be clearer, try harder, and do better' David Roediger, Los Angeles Review of Books'The value in White Fragility lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance' Katy Waldman, New Yorker'A vital, necessary, and beautiful book' Michael Eric Dyson

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Winner of the George Perkins Marsh PrizeWinner of the Stuart L. Bernath PrizeWinner of the W. Turrentine Jackson AwardWinner of the British Association of American Studies Prize“Extraordinary…Deftly rearranges the last century and a half of American history in fresh and useful ways.” —Los Angeles Review of Books“A smart, original, and ambitious book. Black demonstrates that the Interior Department has had a far larger, more invasive, and more consequential role in the world than one would expect.”—Brian DeLay, author of War of a Thousand DesertsWhen considering the story of American power, the Department of the Interior rarely comes to mind. Yet it turns out that a government agency best known for managing natural resources and operating national parks has constantly supported America’s imperial aspirations.Megan Black’s pathbreaking book brings to light the surprising role Interior has played in pursuing minerals around the world—on Indigenous lands, in foreign nations, across the oceans, even in outer space. Black shows how the department touted its credentials as an innocuous environmental-management organization while quietly satisfying America’s insatiable demand for raw materials. As presidents trumpeted the value of self-determination, this almost invisible outreach gave the country many of the benefits of empire without the burden of a heavy footprint. Under the guise of sharing expertise with the underdeveloped world, Interior scouted tin sources in Bolivia and led lithium surveys in Afghanistan. Today, it promotes offshore drilling and even manages a satellite that prospects for Earth’s resources from outer space.“Offers unprecedented insights into the depth and staying power of American exceptionalism…as generations of policymakers sought to extend the reach of U.S. power globally while emphatically denying that the United States was an empire.”—Penny Von Eschen, author of Satchmo Blows Up the World“Succeeds in showing both the central importance of minerals in the development of American power and how the realities of empire could be obscured through a focus on modernization and the mantra of conservation.”—Ian Tyrrell, author of Crisis of the Wasteful Nation

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What is love's real intent? Why can love be so ruthlessly selective? How is it related to sex, beauty, and goodness? And is the child now the supreme object of love? In addressing these questions, Simon May develops a radically new understanding of love as the emotion we feel towards whomever or whatever we experience as grounding our life--as offering us a possibility of home in a world that we supremely value. He sees love as motivated by a promise of "ontological rootedness," rather than, as two thousand years of tradition variously asserts, by beauty or goodness, by a search for wholeness, by virtue, by sexual or reproductive desire, by compassion or altruism or empathy, or, in one of today's dominant views, by no qualities at all of the loved one. After arguing that such founding Western myths as the Odyssey and Abraham's call by God to Canaan in the Bible powerfully exemplify his new conception of love, May goes on to re-examine the relation of love to beauty, sex, and goodness in the light of this conception, offering among other things a novel theory of beauty--and suggesting, against Plato, that we can love others for their ugliness (while also seeing them as beautiful). Finally, he proposes that, in the Western world, romantic love is gradually giving way to parental love as the most valued form of love: namely, the love without which one's life is not deemed complete or truly flourishing. May explains why childhood has become sacred and excellence in parenting a paramount ideal--as well as a litmus test of society's moral health. In doing so, he argues that the child is the first genuinely "modern" supreme object of love: the first to fully reflect what Nietzsche called "the death of God." Readers will find Love "Excitingly new, yet immediately recognizable--that's the paradox at the very heart of love, and it is what Simon May has achieved." --Los Angeles Review of Books

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The award-winning author of the Hexslinger Series “explores the world of film and horror in a way that will leave you reeling” (Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach Trilogy). Former film teacher Lois Cairns is struggling to raise her autistic son while freelancing as a critic when, at a screening, she happens upon a sampled piece of silver nitrate silent footage. She is able to connect it to the early work of Mrs. Iris Dunlopp Whitcomb, the spiritualist and collector of fairy tales who mysteriously disappeared from a train compartment in 1918. Hoping to make her own mark on the film world, Lois embarks on a project to prove that Whitcomb was Canada’s first female filmmaker. But her research takes her down a path not of darkness but of light—the blinding and searing light of a fairy tale made flesh, a noontime demon who demands that duty must be paid. As Lois discovers terrifying parallels between her own life and that of Mrs. Whitcomb, she begins to fear not just for herself, but for those closest to her heart. Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel “One of the standout horror novels of 2015 . . . From an author who has already established herself as one of the genre’s most original and innovative voices, Experimental Film is a remarkable achievement.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Experimental Film represents the next, significant contribution to what is emerging as one of the most interesting and exciting bodies of work currently being produced in the horror field. Every film, Lois Cairns writes, is an experiment. The same might be said of every novel. This one succeeds, wildly.” —Locus “Experimental Film is sensational. When we speak of the best in contemporary horror and weird fiction, we must speak of Gemma Files.” —Laird Barron “[Experimental Film is] truly unnerving. This is a too-often overlooked postmodern gem.” —Esquire, “The 50 Best Horror Books of All Time”

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“[A] tour de force of global history…Bosma has turned the humble sugar crystal into a mighty prism for understanding aspects of global history and the world in which we live.”—Los Angeles Review of BooksThe definitive 2,500-year history of sugar and its human costs, from its little-known origins as a luxury good in Asia to worldwide environmental devastation and the obesity pandemic.For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary purpose in our diets, and extracting it from plants takes hard work and ingenuity. Granulated sugar was first produced in India around the sixth century BC, yet for almost 2,500 years afterward sugar remained marginal in the diets of most people. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How did sugar find its way into almost all the food we eat, fostering illness and ecological crisis along the way?The World of Sugar begins with the earliest evidence of sugar production. Through the Middle Ages, traders brought small quantities of the precious white crystals to rajahs, emperors, and caliphs. But after sugar crossed the Mediterranean to Europe, where cane could not be cultivated, demand spawned a brutal quest for supply. European cravings were satisfied by enslaved labor; two-thirds of the 12.5 million Africans taken across the Atlantic were destined for sugar plantations. By the twentieth century, sugar was a major source of calories in diets across Europe and North America.Sugar transformed life on every continent, creating and destroying whole cultures through industrialization, labor migration, and changes in diet. Sugar made fortunes, corrupted governments, and shaped the policies of technocrats. And it provoked freedom cries that rang with world-changing consequences. In Ulbe Bosma’s definitive telling, to understand sugar’s past is to glimpse the origins of our own world of corn syrup and ethanol and begin to see the threat that a not-so-simple commodity poses to our bodies, our environment, and our communities.

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"In his lucid and bracing history, [David] Bell helps us better understand how [a] charismatic grifter came to occupy the most powerful office in the world . . . Bell's description of our predicament makes for essential reading." -Robert Zaretsky, Los Angeles Review of Books An immersive examination of why the age of democratic revolutions was also a time of hero worship and strongmen In Men on Horseback, the Princeton University historian David A. Bell offers a dramatic new interpretation of modern politics, arguing that the history of democracy is inextricable from the history of charisma, its shadow self. Bell begins with Corsica's Pasquale Paoli, an icon of republican virtue whose exploits were once renowned throughout the Atlantic World. Paoli would become a signal influence in both George Washington's America and Napoleon Bonaparte's France. In turn, Bonaparte would exalt Washington even as he fashioned an entirely different form of leadership. In the same period, Toussaint Louverture sought to make French Revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality a reality for the formerly enslaved people of what would become Haiti, only to be betrayed by Napoleon himself. Simon Bolivar witnessed the coronation of Napoleon and later sought refuge in newly independent Haiti as he fought to liberate Latin America from Spanish rule. Tracing these stories and their interconnections, Bell weaves a spellbinding tale of power and its ability to mesmerize. Ultimately, Bell tells the crucial and neglected story of how political leadership was reinvented for a revolutionary world that wanted to do without kings and queens. If leaders no longer rule by divine right, what underlies their authority? Military valor? The consent of the people? Their own Godlike qualities? Bell's subjects all struggled with this question, learning from each other's example as they did so. They were men on horseback who sought to be men of the people-as Bell shows, modern democracy, militarism, and the cult of the strongman all emerged together. Today, with democracy's appeal and durability under threat around the world, Bell's account of its dark twin is timely and revelatory. For all its dangers, charisma cannot be dispensed with; in the end, Bell offers a stirring injunction to reimagine it as an animating force for good in the politics of our time.

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The latest electrifying collection from acclaimed novelist and short story writer Adrianne Harun.Grand Price Winner, 2019 Eric Hoffer Book AwardIt’s all about loss. Don’t kid yourself. Even a simple game of catch is hinged on the moment the ball leaves the glove, the moment it returns. Don’t even try to think this story or any other story is about something else.In Catch, Release, Adrianne Harun’s second story collection, loss is the driver. But it’s less the usual somber shadow-figure of grieving than an erratically interesting cousin, unmoored, even exhilarated, by the sudden flight into emptiness, the freedom of being neither here nor there. In this suspended state, anything might happen—and it does. Harun’s most realistic stories are suffused with mystery, while her more fantastic tales reveal startling truths within the commonplace. In diverse settings that include, among other places, a British Columbian island, a haunted Midwestern farmhouse, a London townhome, and a dementia care facility overpopulated with dangerously idle guardian angels, characters reconfigure whole worlds as they navigate states defined by absence. In “The Farmhouse Wife,” a young couple, struggling financially, takes up residence in a near-abandoned farmhouse, only to be joined by an inconvenient roommate, a woman whose own bereft state proves perilously seductive. A kleptomaniac father gets caught in one of his petty thefts in “Pearl Diving,” propelling his two sons out of one life into another, perhaps more appropriate, one. In “Madame Ida,” a family of little girls steadily invades a woman’s life as she puzzles out the mysteries of a missing sheriff-turned-cult-leader and the absence of her own son. And in the title story, two teenagers face off against the hurtful lies of an ancient con woman who is mining a widow’s grief for her own ends.Adrianne Harun has been described as an exacting and attentive stylist whose stories are rendered in vivid language. The Los Angeles Review of Books wrote of her work: “Harun finds beauty in pitch black; she makes poetry out of brutality and grace out of terror. She is an alchemist, turning the worst aspects of life into gold.” With Catch, Release, Harun upends the world once more.

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The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

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The first comprehensive biography of this undervalued writer, who was considered 'far and away the best living woman poet' in her day.Andrew Motion's Spectator Book of the Year.'One of the many achievements of This Rare Spirit is its rejection of that tired view of the poet as mouse that barely roared in favour of a true sense of a spikily modern woman, bound by various obligations but resilient, headstrong, and poetically inventive . . . Copus's diligent, scholarly, sensitive work should help Mew's pipe play on for years to come.' Declan Ryan, Los Angeles Review of Books'[A] supreme biography . . . It is hard to do justice to the breadth of research Copus has done here, or the compassionate, detailed conjuring of Mew and her milieu . . . An essential book, a classic work of literary biography.' Seán Hewitt, Irish Times'[K]eenly intelligent, fascinating and nuanced biography . . . Save Charlotte Mew! And read this book.' Joanna Kavenna, Literary Review'An exquisitely told account of the life of a half-forgotten London poet whose work was admired by Hardy, Sassoon and Virginia Woolf. Julia Copus does her justice at last.' Claire Tomalin'This Rare Spirit is a classic - the biography of Mew we have all been waiting for.' Fiona BensonThe British poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was regarded as one of the best poets of her age by fellow writers, including Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sasson, Walter de la Mare and Marianne Moore. She has since been neglected, but her star is beginning to rise again, all the more since her 150th anniversary in 2019. This is the first comprehensive biography, from cradle to grave, and is written by fellow poet Julia Copus, who recently unveiled a blue plaque on Mew's childhood house in Doughty Street and was the editor of the Selected Poetry and Prose (2019).Mew was a curious mix of New Woman and stalwart Victorian. Her poems speak to us strongly today, in these strangely mixed times of exposure and seclusion: they reveal the private agony of an isolated being who was forced to keep secret the tragedies of her personal life while being at the same time propelled by her work into the public arena. Her poetry transfigures that very private suffering into art that has a universal resonance.

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The first comprehensive biography of this undervalued writer, who was considered 'far and away the best living woman poet' in her day.Andrew Motion's Spectator Book of the Year.'One of the many achievements of This Rare Spirit is its rejection of that tired view of the poet as mouse that barely roared in favour of a true sense of a spikily modern woman, bound by various obligations but resilient, headstrong, and poetically inventive . . . Copus's diligent, scholarly, sensitive work should help Mew's pipe play on for years to come.' Declan Ryan, Los Angeles Review of Books'[A] supreme biography . . . It is hard to do justice to the breadth of research Copus has done here, or the compassionate, detailed conjuring of Mew and her milieu . . . An essential book, a classic work of literary biography.' Seán Hewitt, Irish Times'[K]eenly intelligent, fascinating and nuanced biography . . . Save Charlotte Mew! And read this book.' Joanna Kavenna, Literary Review'An exquisitely told account of the life of a half-forgotten London poet whose work was admired by Hardy, Sassoon and Virginia Woolf. Julia Copus does her justice at last.' Claire Tomalin'This Rare Spirit is a classic - the biography of Mew we have all been waiting for.' Fiona BensonThe British poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was regarded as one of the best poets of her age by fellow writers, including Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sasson, Walter de la Mare and Marianne Moore. She has since been neglected, but her star is beginning to rise again, all the more since her 150th anniversary in 2019. This is the first comprehensive biography, from cradle to grave, and is written by fellow poet Julia Copus, who recently unveiled a blue plaque on Mew's childhood house in Doughty Street and was the editor of the Selected Poetry and Prose (2019).Mew was a curious mix of New Woman and stalwart Victorian. Her poems speak to us strongly today, in these strangely mixed times of exposure and seclusion: they reveal the private agony of an isolated being who was forced to keep secret the tragedies of her personal life while being at the same time propelled by her work into the public arena. Her poetry transfigures that very private suffering into art that has a universal resonance.

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Beautifully written, thought-provoking, intense and cleverly wrought, this is the most extraordinary first novel from a mesmerising new talent. One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women. Set on the remote Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth draws us into the world of an astonishing cast of characters, all connected by an unfathomable crime. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty – densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska – and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused. In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel provides a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before. Praise for Disappearing Earth "A genuine masterpiece, but one that is easily consumed in a feverish stay-up-all-night bout of reading pleasure." Gary Shteyngart “Suspenseful, original and compelling, Disappearing Earth is a strange and haunting voyage into a strange and haunting world.'Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of The Romanovs “Julia Phillips is at once a careful cartographer and gorgeous storyteller... . A mystery of two missing girls burns at the center of this astonishing debut, and the complexity of ethnicity, gender, hearth and kin illuminates this question and many more.”Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage ‘A most extraordinarily beautiful and haunting first novel, and the unveiling of a rare and special talent’ New Statesman 'A knock-out... .The stitches of Phillips’s language make you go, Damn, that’s good.' The Los Angeles Review of Books 'A superb debut.' New York Times 'Phillips explores the devastation in this complex, imaginative and beautifully written crime novel, which is as beautiful as the scenery it depicts.' Woman's Weekly 'I was so absorbed I forgot to take notes...each new domestic world was deftly conjured and fresh.' Sarah Moss, The Guardian 'This book takes the 'missing girl' trope and turns it on its head' Elle 'Intriguing, tantalising, perfectly executed.' Spectator

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This important volume gathers work from Herman Hesse Prize winner, German-Language Swiss poet Klaus Merz’s fifteen collections of poetry, from 1963-2016.This important volume gathers work from Herman Hesse Prize winner, German-Language Swiss poet Klaus Merz’s fifteen collections of poetry, from 1963-2016. Throughout his career, Swiss Poet Klaus Merz has been praised as an artisan of the understatement, and it is precisely in these smallest of details that the great unexpected has the potential to be illuminated. As Merz himself has said: “The poetry nudges toward a secret, hopefully without ostentation, rather through the power of its own alphabet.” This seminal volume brings together selections from Merz’s fifteen collections of poetry (1963-2016).“Reading Merz' spare illuminating poems is like entering Plato's cave and witnessing the light behind the shadows.” –Nin Andrews“Merz takes careful notes, thinking and feeling himself into his subject as if from fragments. A strange exhilaration, curiously impersonal yet packed with personality.” –Brian Swann“Merz’ world is a shimmering window onto beauty and insight, so precisely understated that many of the poems border on the hypnotic and can be read time and time again. It’s no wonder that so many are short, eight or ten lines or less: his eye and ear are both so incisive that if he wrote at too great length the resultant intensity could be painful. Merz is a poet who expands and deepens with his conciseness, who embodies imagism’s implied aesthetic of ‘less is more.’”—Lit Pub“An artisan of the understatement, a craftsman of finely-tuned precision.” –Neue Zuricher ZeitungKlaus Merz was born in 1945 in Aarau and lives in Unterkulm, Switzerland. He has won many literary awards including the Hermann Hesse Prize for Literature, Swiss Schiller Foundation Poetry Prize and the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize in 2012. He has published over 35 works of poetry and fiction. His latest novel is The Argentinian (Der Argentine, Haymon, 2009) and his recent collections of verse are Out of the Dust (Aus dem Staub, Haymon, 2010), Unexpected Development (Unerwarteter Verlauf, Haymon, 2013), What Helios Hauls (Helios Transport, Haymon 2016) and firm (firma, Haymon, 2019)Marc Vincenz is a poet, translator, fiction writer, editor, musician and artist. He has published over 30 books of poetry, fiction and translation. His work has been published in The Nation, Ploughshares, Raritan, Colorado Review and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is publisher and editor of MadHat Press and publisher of New American Writing. His newest books are There Might Be a Moon or a Dog (Gazebo, Australia, 2022) and The Pearl Diver of Irunmani (White Pine Press, forthcoming 2023).

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Advance Praise:'I deeply adore this shattering, sexy, funny book.' Megan Nolan'Totally compelling and brilliant. I couldn't put it down.' Cecilia Knapp'A dazzling, feather-light tour de force-witty and effervescent and insightful, and so sexy, and so real.' Elif Batuman, author of Either/OrMaggie Millner's seductive debut is a novel-in-verse about a woman in her late twenties who leaves a long-term relationship with a boyfriend for another woman. The affair thrusts her from an outwardly conventional life into queerness, polyamory, kink, and unalloyed, consuming desire. What ensues is an exploration of obsession, gender, identity-making, sexual experiment, and the art and act of literary transformation. Couplets is a dazzling fusion of form and content, chronicling the strictures, structures and pitfalls of relationships - the mirroring, the pleasing, the small jealousies and disappointments. Playful, clever, lovestruck, griefstruck, its narrator dances a tightrope of her own invention with captivating passion and skill.'Couplets compelled me like a love affair-I didn't want to eat, didn't want to go to bed, didn't want to get off the subway, I just wanted to hear the story it was telling, which was, ultimately, a story about form-what are the forms (of intimacy, vocation, domesticity, verse, pleasure) we want to be held by, and to break free from? I cannot remember the last time I was this gripped by a voice or its questions. Reading it was a thrill, a rearrangement of my psychic molecules.' Leslie Jamison, author of Make It Scream, Make It Burn 'In this riveting debut, Maggie Millner makes the rhyming couplet-that supposedly staid, outmoded vehicle of 18th century moralism-an engine of radical metamorphosis and scorching sex. Couplets plunges us into desire so fierce it overwrites existence, exiling us from the lives we know. This is an endlessly inventive, wise, exhilarating book.' Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to YouFrom reviews: 'An astounding debut . . . This is a book that seduces the brain . . . Millner's couplets enact high-wire acts of wit and poignancy.' Adrienne Raphel, New York Times Book Review'Couplets is chock-full of lines and phrases that can stop a reader in their tracks... I've never read a better encapsulation of what it means to question a previously fixed idea of identity and selfhood. The book as a whole is an experimental-feeling yet unyielding love letter to precisely those kinds of questions.' Emma Specter, Vogue'While desire is, no doubt, this book's throbbing taxi, Millner's consistent modulation of tone and perspective safeguards the book from the claustrophobia of erotic quest. She offers a philosophy of sexuality as an expansive force: an organization of pleasure that refutes neoliberalism's demand for incessant labor.' Heather Treseler, Los Angeles Review of Books'Millner's ultimate achievement is to draw open the distance between the book's first line and its ostensibly identical second, between the self that one takes as given and the self, no less true, that one cannot help but make.' Kamran Javadizadeh, New Yorker

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"If you haven't read this book yet--buy it, take it home, and read it now! This is the work that made me get off my ass and actually do something, and it will inspire you, too."--Kathleen Hanna, singer, Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin "I believe Karen Finley's un-careful rage was threatening because it is filled with grief, humor, and a profound passion for this life. Rereading it, I feel refreshed, as if I've been self-policing for years by tolerating boring, stupid things and now I'm free again. Thank you, Karen."--Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man "Shock Treatment is as timely and crucial as ever, inspiring feminist rage and wildness just as when it first blew my mind twenty-five years ago."--Michelle Tea, author of How to Grow Up "Karen Finley is an iconoclast who, ironically, became an icon when her work in Shock Treatment was targeted by right wing politicians. This important book is as necessary and vital today as it was twenty-years ago."--Sapphire, author of Push, among other works "Reading Shock Treatment today reminds me that Karen Finley has always been a writer of conscience. I remember seeing and hearing her read "The Black Sheep" off a piece of legal paper in the middle of a play at The Kitchen. No frills. She simply re-invented the poem."--Eileen Myles, author of Snowflake/different streets "How exciting for you, me, Karen, and the world--to have an occasion to revisit this period of powerful and earth-shaking work. Culture wars? Those bastards had no idea what they were up against."--Justin Vivian Bond, author of Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels "Finley’s Shock Treatment is more than just 'art.' It remains a searing and necessary indictment of America, a call to arms, a great protest against the injustices waged on queers and women during a time in recent American history where government intervention and recognition was so desperately needed. Twenty-five years on, Finley’s work continues to shock and provoke readers and audiences, demonstrating the powerful cultural and political impact her work has had on modern American art and performance art."--Nathan Smith, Los Angeles Review of Books No other artist captures the drama and fragility of the AIDS era as Karen Finley does in her 1990 classic book Shock Treatment. "The Black Sheep," "We Keep Our Victims Ready," "I Was Never Expected to Be Talented,"--these are some of the seminal works which excoriated homophobia and misogyny at a time when artists and writers were under attack for challenging the status quo. This twenty-fifth anniversary expanded edition features a new introduction in which Finley reflects on publishing her first book as she became internationally known for being denied an NEA grant because of perceived obscenity in her work. She traces her journey from art school to burlesque gigs to the San Francisco North Beach literary scene. A new poem reminds us of Finley's disarming ability to respond to the era's most challenging issues with grace and humor. KAREN FINLEY's raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. She has appeared and exhibited her visual art, performances, and plays internationally. The author of many books including A Different Kind of Intimacy, George & Martha, and The Reality Shows, she is a professor at the Tisch School of Art and Public Policy at NYU.

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Recommended by the New York Times and NBC News, and called one of the Best Books of the Year by Buzzfeed! The New York Times directs readers to Retablos if you want to know "what's life really like on the Mexican border." "Solis grew up just a mile from the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, and he tells stories about his childhood and coming of age, including his parents migration to the United States from Mexico, his first encounter with racism and finding a Mexican migrant girl hiding in the cotton fields."—Concepción de León, New York Times Seminal moments, rites of passage, crystalline vignettes—a memoir about growing up brown at the U.S./Mexico border. More praise for Octavio Solis's Retablos: "This is American and Mexican literature a stone's throw from the always hustling El Paso border."—Gary Soto, author of The Elements of San Joaquin "We inhabit a border world rich in characters, lush with details, playful and poignant, a border that refutes the stereotypes and divisions smaller minds create. Solis reminds us that sometimes the most profound truths are best told with crafted fictions--and he is a master at it."—Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents " … it's hard not to consider the border itself as a representation of a 'terrible rift,' a split between homes, communities, identities, generations. While reading this generous and eye-opening account, it's easy to see how, for the country at large, the rift has only deepened.”—Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed Best Books of Fall 2018 "Landing somewhere between Neil Gaiman and Juan Rulfo, Solis secularizes the mythological by turning men and women into saintly figures—like their criada [maid], Consuelo, and a white priest who shows his family empathy—and monsters: border agents who take his friends away and school bullies."—Michael Adam Carroll, The Millions "There has never been a border book like Retablos, a collection of smoldering epiphanies suffering the baptizing waters of recall. . . ."—Roberto Ontiveros, San Antonio Current "The book is rendered in tight, stand-alone recollections rich with poetry and honesty. . . . If retablos are offerings, then Solis' book is a gift of memory, not always pleasant, but always true."—Beatriz Terrazas, Dallas Morning News "The experience of reading his tightly contained memories in succession is a bit like drawing old coins up from a wishing well. Filtered through veils of distance and time, these scenes and reflections are wonderful and weird flashes of childhood, adolescence and early adulthood in the life of this particular Mexican American boy."-- Sophie Haigney, San Francisco Chronicle "Octavio Solis' Retablos recounts a 'beautiful, messy' youth on the border. Though its title evokes Mexican folk art, Retablos is closer in effect to that of French pointillism. Its small dabs of vivid color produce a brilliant cumulative effect."—Steven G. Kellman, The Texas Observer "In this debut memoir, playwright Solis delivers top-notch vignettes of his youth with riveting imagery and empathy, recounting--and embellishing, he says--memories of growing up brown in El Paso, Tex. . . . These brilliantly told stories of missteps and redemption are a treat."--Publishers Weekly ". . .what struck me most about each chapter was Solis's ability to plant a specific image in your mind. With every retablo, you can see in ferocious detail exactly what the author wants you to see, like a special kind of telepathy. I found myself wanting to paint them."—Caitlyn Reynolds, The Los Angeles Review of Books "In all, a beautiful, evocative, and timely expression of border culture for every collection."--Sara Martinez, Booklist "In this coming-of-age memoir, a playwright illuminates the culture of the El Paso border as he perceived it when he was young. . . . An intriguing work that transcends category, drawing from facts but reading like fiction."--Kirkus Reviews

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Buy a pair of Levi's, lose the Russian accent, become an American... how hard could it be?Moscow, 1988. After years of antisemitic harassment, countless hours waiting in line for toilet paper, and having zero access to cool jeans, Margarita decides it's time to get the hell out of the Soviet Union. While dreaming of buying the boat-sized Buick she'd seen in a pirated VHS of Miami Vice and getting a taste of whatever it is Bruce Springsteen is singing about, she comes up with a plan to escape Mother Russia for good. When Margarita arrives in the US with her family, she has one objective - become fully American as soon as possible, and leave her Soviet past behind. But she soon learns that finding her new voice is harder than avoiding the KGB.Because, how do you become someone else completely? Is it as simple as changing your name, upgrading your wardrobe and working on your pronunciation of the word 'sheet'? Can you let go of old habits (never, ever throw anything away), or learn to date without hang-ups ('there is no sex in the Soviet Union' after all)? Will you ever stop disappointing your parents, who expect you to become a doctor, a lawyer, an investment banker and a classical pianist - all at the same time? And can you still become the person you dreamed you'd be, while learning to embrace parts of yourself you've wanted to discard for good when you immigrated?Absolutely hilarious, painfully honest and sometimes heart-breaking, the award-winning I Named My Dog Pushkin will have fans of David Sedaris and Samantha Irby howling with laughter at Margarita's failures, her victories and the life lessons she learns as she grows as both a woman and an immigrant, in a world that often doesn't appreciate either. What readers are saying about I Named My Dog Pushkin:'Hilariously funny, whip-smart and absolutely fascinating... Silver shows that the only person she needs to ever become is herself. Just amazing.' Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and With or Without You'Laugh-out-loud funny... a particular pleasure to see our splintered country through the eyes of this determined and appreciative emigree.' NPR Books'An eye-opener... a whole other brand of Jewish humor... The book's wit, drama and erudition appear to me wholly miraculous. Margarita deserves a literary prize.' Alicia Bay Laurel, New York Times bestselling author of Living on the Earth'Hysterically funny and thought-provoking... perfect for anyone fascinated with the USSR' FangirlNation'I thoroughly enjoyed Margarita's witty and acerbic voice. This book was a delight!' Jen Mann, New York Times bestselling author of People I Want to Punch in the Throat'Hilarious... From one USSR immigrant to another... I related a lot.' Margarita Levieva, HBO's The Deuce'Hilarious and thought-provoking.' California Bookwatch'A memoir like this is so very rare, one in which you learn a great deal, while laughing throughout. Highly, highly recommended.' Wandering Educators'Plunges the reader into a world in which Coca-Cola is synonymous with freedom... riveting... moving... Gokun Silver is a gifted, witty writer.' Los Angeles Review of Books'Sure to delight while tugging at your heartstrings.' Jewish Book Council'Had me laughing and smiling all the way through... a perfect balance of wit and seriousness... Superb.' Goodreads reviewer'Laughed my socks off!' Goodreads reviewer'I loved this book so much... I just could not stop reading.' NetGalley reviewer'A sharp, witty memoir... Margarita captured Jewish joy and grief together perfectly.' Goodreads reviewer'Darkly funny... reminiscent of other acerbic comedian authors like Sara Barron... fascinating.' NetGalley reviewer

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