Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts
Kirsten Powers - 2021
On a good day, there will be civil disagreement. On a bad day, it's all-out trench warfare--shouting, name calling, a cycle of outrage and judgment. More than once, Powers has been left asking a question that countless Americans have started to ask: What's happened to me?In Saving Grace, Powers writes with wit and insight about our country's toxic political discourse, from the lessons she's learned navigating difficult friendships both before and after the age of Trump, to examples from history of grace under pressure--both past civil rights movements and activists working for change today--to the psychology of what actually causes people to change their minds. To be grace-ish, Powers learned, means attempting to look for the best in others, listening and engaging with people of opposing views, and providing a path to redemption for those who have failed spectacularly--all without compromising on your ethical and moral convictions.Provocative, smart, and filled with deep wisdom, Saving Grace is an essential read for anyone seeking sanity in a world that has lost its mind.
The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism
Jennifer Gunter - 2021
Jen Gunter, the internet’s most fearless advocate for women’s health, brings you empowerment through knowledge by countering stubborn myths and misunderstandings about menopause with hard facts, real science, fascinating historical perspective, and expert advice.The only thing predictable about menopause is its unpredictability. Factor in widespread misinformation, a lack of research, and the culture of shame around women's bodies, and it's no wonder women are unsure what to expect during the menopause transition and beyond.Menopause is not a disease--it's a planned change, like puberty. And just like puberty, we should be educated on what's to come years in advance, rather than the current practice of leaving people on their own with bothersome symptoms and too much conflicting information. Knowing what is happening, why, and what to do about it is both empowering and reassuring.Frank and funny, Dr. Jen debunks misogynistic attitudes and challenges theover-mystification of menopause to reveal everything you really need to know about:- Perimenopause - Hot flashes - Sleep disruption - Sex and libido - Depression and mood changes - Skin and hair issues - Outdated therapies - Breast health - Weight and muscle mass - Health maintenance screening - And much more!Filled with practical, reassuring information, this essential guide will revolutionize how women experience menopause--including how their lives can be even better for it!
Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation
Jamie Thompson - 2020
As officers patrolled a march in Dallas, a young man stepped out of an SUV wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a high-powered rifle. He killed five officers and wounded eleven others. It fell to a small group of cops to corner the shooter inside a community college, where a fierce gun battle was followed by a stalemate. Crisis negotiator Larry Gordon, a 21-year department veteran, spent hours bonding with the gunman—over childhood ghosts and death and shared experiences of racial injustice in America—while his colleagues devised an unprecedented plan to bring the night to its dramatic end. Thompson’s minute-by-minute account includes intimate portrayals of the negotiator, a surgeon who operated on the fallen officers, a mother of four shot down in the street, and the SWAT officers tasked with stopping the gunman. This is a deeply affecting story of real people navigating a terrifying crisis and a city's attempts to heal its divisions.
Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land
Toni Jensen - 2020
As an adult, she’s had guns waved in her face near Standing Rock, and felt their silent threat on the concealed-carry campus where she teaches. And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of indigenous women, on indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten.In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America. In the title chapter, Jensen connects the trauma of school shootings with her own experiences of racism and sexual assault on college campuses. "The Worry Line" explores the gun and gang violence in her neighborhood the year her daughter was born. "At the Workshop" focuses on her graduate school years, during which a workshop classmate repeatedly killed off thinly veiled versions of her in his stories. In "Women in the Fracklands", Jensen takes the listener inside Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and bears witness to the peril faced by women in regions overcome by the fracking boom.In prose at once forensic and deeply emotional, Toni Jensen shows herself to be a brave new voice and a fearless witness to her own difficult history - as well as to the violent cultural landscape in which she finds her coordinates. With each chapter, Carry reminds us that surviving in one’s country is not the same as surviving one’s country.
The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and The People Who Stopped It
Mark Bowden - 2022
Focusing on six states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin— Trump’s supporters claimed widespread voter fraud.It was not a well-orchestrated matter. There was no guiding genius pulling the strings in key states for the defeated Donald Trump. In the weeks after the election, in counties and precincts all over the country, many local Republican officials and even Trump’s own campaign workers washed their hands of his increasingly unhinged allegations of fraud. But there was no shortage of people willing to take up the fight. Urged on by Trump and his coterie of advocates, lawyers, and media propagandists, true believers turned on their colleagues, friends, and neighbors — even those in their own party — to accuse them of rigging the election.The real story of the insurrection began months before Trump’s mob attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. That riot was the desperate final act, emblematic of the clumsy, failed movement Trump had been building for years. It began in cities and small towns all over America on election day, November 3, 2020.Working with a team of researchers and reporters, Bowden and Teague uncover never-before-told accounts from the election officials fighting to do their jobs amid outlandish claims and threats to themselves, their colleagues, and their families. The Steal is an engaging, in-depth report on what happened during those crucial nine weeks and a portrait of the heroic individuals who did their duty and stood firm against the unprecedented, sustained attack on our election system to ensure that every legal vote was counted and the will of the people prevailed.
The White Devil's Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown
Julia Flynn Siler - 2019
Known as the Occidental Mission Home, it survived earthquakes, fire, bubonic plague, and violence directed against its occupants and supporters--a courageous group of female abolitionists who fought the slave trade in Chinese women. With compassion and an investigative historian's sharp eyes, Siler tells the story of both the abolitionists, who challenged the corrosive, anti-Chinese prejudices of the time, and the young women who dared to flee their fate. She relates how the women who ran the house defied contemporary convention, even occasionally broke the law, by physically rescuing children from the brothels where they worked, or snatching them off the ships smuggling them in, and helped bring the exploiters to justice. She has also uncovered the stories of many of the girls and young women who came to the Mission and the lives they later led, sometimes becoming part of the home's staff themselves. A remarkable story of an overlooked part of our history, told with sympathy and vigor.
Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America
Julie Dicaro - 2021
From casual sexism, like condescending coverage of women's pro sports, to more serious issues, like athletes who abuse their partners and face only minimal consequences, this area of our culture is home to a vast swath of gender issues that apply to all of us--whether or not our work and leisure time revolve around what happens on the field.No one is better equipped to examine sports through this feminist lens than sports journalist Julie DiCaro. Throughout her experiences covering professional sports for more than a decade, DiCaro has been outspoken about the exploitation of the female body, the covert and overt sexism women face in the workplace, and the male-driven toxicity in sports fandom. Now through candid interviews, personal anecdotes, and deep research, she's tackling these thorny issues and exploring what America can do to give women a fair and competitive playing field in sports and beyond.Covering everything from the abusive online environment at Barstool Sports to the sexist treatment of Serena Williams and professional women's teams fighting for equal pay and treatment, and looking back at pioneering women who first took on the patriarchy in sports media, Sidelined will illuminate the ways sports present a microcosm of life as a woman in America--and the power in fighting back.
FIRSTS: Women Who Are Changing the World
TIME Magazine - 2017
A companion to TIME's multi-platform documentary, the book includes 15 first person deep-dives into the lives of influential women such as General Lori Robinson, the first woman to lead troops into combat, Kathryn Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space, and Aretha Franklin, the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Many others, including Oprah Winfrey, Madeline Albright, and Sheryl Sandburg offer their own personal reflections, thematic quotes and perspectives on balance, perseverance and strength.Each first-person piece or quote is accompanied by a distinctive portrait by photographer Luisa Dorr ― set up and taken on her iPhone. Others included in this unforgettable volume: Serena Williams, Ellen Degeneres, Loretta Lynch, Shonda Rimes, Nancy Pelosi, Rita Moreno, Cindy Sherman and Mo’Ne Davis.With a stirring introduction by Nancy Gibbs, herself a pioneer as the first female editor of TIME magazine, this is an inspirational book for all women and men.
The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer
Kate Kyriacou - 2015
An elaborately staged fake crime gang, run by a ‘Mr Big’, that lured Brett Cowan in with the promise of a hefty payout. It was the stuff of a TV crime series rather than an Australian police operation. The Sting reveals extraordinary new detail and a shocking insight into one of the country's most evil killers, and the operation that brought him down.Go behind the scenes in one of Australia’s most sensational undercover busts, including never-before-heard detail of the covert investigation, including how Cowan was slowly brainwashed into believing ‘Mr Big’.Read what Cowan’s family think of their black sheep.
AOC: The Fearless Rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and What It Means for America
Lynda Lopez - 2020
Seventeen writers explore the multiple meanings of a young Latina politician who has already made history. From the moment Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat a ten-term incumbent in the primary election for New York’s 14th, her journey to the national, if not world, stage, was fast-tracked. Six months later, as the youngest Congresswoman ever elected, AOC became one of a handful of Latina politicians in Washington, D.C. Just thirty, she represents her generation, the millennials, proudly working class, Democratic Socialist, of Puerto Rican descent, master of social media, not to mention of the Bronx and feminist.AOC investigates her symbolic and personal significance for so many, from her willingness to use her imperfect bi-lingualism, to the threat she poses by governing like a man, to the long history of Puerto Rican and anti-Israel activism. Contributors span a wide range of voices and ages, from media to the arts and politics:
Read to Lead: The Simple Habit That Expands Your Influence and Boosts Your Career
Jeff Brown - 2021
It's responsible for unlocking limitless creativity and influence. It's known to reduce stress, improve decision-making skills, and make you a better leader. What is it? Reading. And it's the single best thing you can do to improve yourself professionally.Reading more and better books creates opportunities for you to learn new skills, rise above your competition, and build a successful career. In Read to Lead you'll learn- why you need to read like your career depends on it- the five science-backed reasons reading will help you build your career- how to absorb a book into your bloodstream- a technique that can double (or triple!) your reading speed- tips on creating a lifetime reading habit- and moreIf you want to lead a more satisfied life, have more intelligent conversations, and broaden your mind, you need to read to lead!
Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs
David Philipps - 2021
But within the platoon a different war raged. Even as Alpha’s chief, Eddie Gallagher, was being honored by the Navy for his leadership, several of his men were preparing to report him for war crimes, alleging that he’d stabbed a prisoner in cold blood and taken lethal sniper shots at unarmed civilians.Many young SEALs regarded Gallagher as the ideal special operations commando. Trained as a sniper, a medic, and an explosives expert, he was considered a battle-tested leader. But in the heat of combat, some in his platoon saw a darker figure—a man who appeared to be coming unhinged after multiple deployments in America’s forever wars. Their excitement to work with a tough, experienced chief soon gave way to a grim suspicion that his thirst for blood seemed to know no bounds and a belief that his unpredictability was as dangerous as the enemy. In riveting detail, Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times correspondent David Philipps reveals the story of a group of special operators caught in a moral crucible—should they uphold their oath and turn in their chief, or honor the SEALs’ unwritten code of silence? It is also a larger story of how the SEAL Teams drifted off course after 9/11, and of the “pirate” subculture that festered within their ranks—a secret brotherhood that, in a time of endless war with few clear victories, made the act of killing itself the paramount goal. The investigation and trial following Alpha’s deployment—and Gallagher’s ultimate acquittal on the most serious charges—would pit SEAL against SEAL, set the Navy brass on a collision course with President Donald Trump, and turn Gallagher into a political litmus test in a hotly polarized America. A page-turning tale of battle, honor, and betrayal, Alpha is a remarkable exposé of the fault lines fracturing a country that has been at war for a generation and counting.
Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism, and the Need for Collective Change
Aja Barber - 2021
And how these oppressive systems have bled into the fashion industry and its lack of diversity and equality. She will also reveal how we spend our money and whose pockets it goes into and whose it doesn't (clue: the people who do the actual work) and will tell her story of how she came to learn the truth. In the second 'unlearning' half of the book, she will help you to understand the uncomfortable truth behind why you consume the way you do. She asks you to confront the sense of lack you have, the feeling that you are never quite enough and the reasons why you fill the aching void with consumption rather than compassion. And she makes you challenge this power disparity, and take back ownership of it. The less you buy into the consumer culture the more power you have. CONSUMED will teach you how to be a citizen not a consumer.
Raging Heart
Sheila Weller - 1995
294 pages. Book is VG dust jacket also
Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood
Margot Mifflin - 2020
From its start in 1921 as an Atlantic City tourist draw to its current incarnation as a scholarship competition, the pageant has indexed women’s status during periods of social change―the post-suffrage 1920s, the Eisenhower 1950s, the #MeToo era. This ever-changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations.Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s.In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.