Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman


Anne Helen Petersen - 2017
    It's not that she's an outcast (she might even be your friend or your wife, or your mother) so much as she's a social variable. Sometimes, she's the life of the party; others, she's the center of gossip. She's the unruly woman, and she's one of the most provocative, powerful forms of womanhood today. There have been unruly women for as long as there have been boundaries of what constitutes acceptable "feminine" behavior, but there's evidence that she's on the rise--more visible and less easily dismissed--than ever before. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of "unruliness" to explore the ascension of eleven contemporary powerhouses: Serena Williams, Melissa McCarthy, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, Nicki Minaj, Kim Kardashian, Hillary Clinton, Caitlyn Jenner, Jennifer Weiner, and Lena Dunham. Petersen explores why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures, each of whom has been conceived as "too" something: too queer, too strong, too honest, too old, too pregnant, too shrill, too much. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.

Revolutionary Rehearsals


Colin Barker - 2008
    They demonstrate that workers can and will fight back on a mass scale.Each episode offers an inspiring glimpse of the way in which workers rise to the challenge of fighting for a better world—and pose their own alternative to the system.Although none of these struggles ultimately achieved their goals, they were "revolutionary rehearsals" that hold important lessons about the struggle for socialism under modern conditions.

Sidekick to The Burning Room by Michael Connelly


Samantha C. Allen - 2014
    If you have not yet bought The Burning Room, make sure to purchase it before buying this unofficial Sidekick. Killing someone is usually the work of a few moments. But when Orlando Mercedo dies of blood poisoning from the bullet lodged in his spine a decade ago, Detective Harry Bosch finds himself looking at a ten-year murder. With a new partner in tow, Bosch starts digging for the truth in what quickly becomes a highly charged political case. With this Sidekick, you’ll: • Discover some of The Burning Room's fascinating hidden gems • Spend some more time with the characters you’ve come to know and love • Learn what you might have missed on your first read of The Burning Room • Explore a possible alternate ending and imagine ideas for a sequel • Get a chance to discuss Michael Connelly's The Burning Room with other readers on our Facebook forum Sidekicks are entertaining and insightful reading companions, filled with delightful commentary and thought-provoking questions. Readers have raved that they "really put you in touch with the many layers of the novel," "keep you entertained even longer," and are "perfect if you want a vivid understanding of the story." Designed to be read side by side with the novels they complement, they’ll give you even more reasons to love some of today’s best books.

Loitering: New & Collected Essays


Charles D'Ambrosio - 2014
    In the decade since the tiny limited-edition volume sold out its print run, its devotees have pressed it upon their friends, students, and colleagues, only to find themselves begging for their copy’s safe return. For anyone familiar with D’Ambrosio’s writing, this enthusiasm should come as no surprise. His work is exacting and emotionally generous, often as funny as it is devastating. Loitering gathers those eleven original essays with new and previously uncollected work so that a broader audience might discover one of our great living essayists. No matter his subject — Native American whaling, a Pentecostal “hell house,” Mary Kay Letourneau, the work of J. D. Salinger, or, most often, his own family — D’Ambrosio approaches each piece with a singular voice and point of view; each essay, while unique and surprising, is unmistakably his own.

Mixed-Race Superman


Will Harris - 2018
    Mixed-Race Superman is a reflection on the lives of two very different supermen: Barack Obama and Keanu Reeves.In an era where a man endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan can sit in the White House, Will Harris argues that the mixed-race background of each gave them a shapelessness that was a form of resistance.Drawing on his own personal experience and examining the way that these two men have been embedded in our collective consciousness, Harris asks what they can teach us about race and heroism.

Letter from Birmingham Jail


Martin Luther King Jr. - 1963
    There is an alternate edition published under ISBN13: 9780062509550. 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' This landmark missive from one of the greatest activists in history calls for direct, non-violent resistance in the fight against racism, and reflects on the healing power of love.This edition also contains the sermon 'The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life'.

Nasty Women


Laura JonesChitra Ramaswamy - 2017
    We must hold the truth to account in the midst of sensationalism and international political turmoil. Nasty Women is a collection of essays, interviews and accounts on what it is to be a woman in the 21st century.People, politics, pressure, punk - From working class experience to racial divides in Trump’s America, being a child of immigrants, to sexual assault, Brexit, pregnancy, contraception, identity, family, finding a voice online, role models and more, Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!, Zeba Talkhani, Chitra Ramaswamy are just a few of the incredible women who share their experience here.Keep telling your stories, and tell them loud.

Bluets


Maggie Nelson - 2009
    With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.

The Voice Of The Jamaican Ghetto: Incarcerated but not Silenced


Adidja Palmer - 2012
    I hope after reading you realize there is something wrong with Jamaica that needs to be fixed......I hope you will never look at a ghetto person the same again. I hope you will never see a young girl in a compromising position with an older man and not question what is going on. I hope you will never see a young man in jail and write him off as 'wutless' or bad.....Most importantly, I hope that you will not only hear but listen to the voice of the ghetto. I end in the words of Marcus Garvey - One God, One Aim, One Destiny, one Love. Until we meet again, I remain, yours truly.

The Assassin's Prayer


Mark Allen - 2013
    But some sins refuse to stay buried and Kain finds himself fighting not only a ruthless nemesis from his shadowy past, but also the scars on his soul, which are torn open by the arrival of a woman from his past. With its full-auto pace, high-powered action, and raw emotion, The Assassin's Prayer is a relentless tale of redemption for those who know that bullets sometimes speak louder than words.

Breathing Eden: Conversations with God on Light, Fresh Air, and New Things


Jennifer J. Camp - 2016
    We need to know how he sees us. Come on, girl, he says. Let my light shine in. Breathing Eden is forty raw, honest, heartbreaking and encouraging conversations between women and God. These prayers are like our own: full of pain, celebration, anxiety, and joy. Each one helps the reader hear God whisper love and hope into their lives. And after each story, Jennifer offers readers a guided invitation to listen for what God is saying to them. In these pages, readers will find hope and fresh perspectives. It's an invitation to come. Breathe Eden.

Meaty


Samantha Irby - 2013
    Every essay is crafted with the same scathing wit and poignant candor thousands of loyal readers have come to expect from visiting her notoriously hilarious blog.

An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago


Alex Kotlowitz - 2019
    What does that do to the spirit of individuals and community? Drawing on his decades of experience, Alex Kotlowitz set out to chronicle one summer in the city, writing about individuals who have emerged from the violence and whose stories capture the capacity--and the breaking point--of the human heart and soul. The result is a spellbinding collection of deeply intimate profiles that upend what we think we know about gun violence in America. Among others, we meet a man who as a teenager killed a rival gang member and twenty years later is still trying to come to terms with what he's done; a devoted school social worker struggling with her favorite student, who refuses to give evidence in the shooting death of his best friend; the witness to a wrongful police shooting who can't shake what he has seen; and an aging former gang leader who builds a place of refuge for himself and his friends. Applying the close-up, empathic reporting that made There Are No Children Here a modern classic, Kotlowitz offers a piercingly honest portrait of a city in turmoil. These sketches of those left standing will get into your bones. This one summer will stay with you.

Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity


David Foster Wallace - 2003
    Now he brings his considerable talents to the history of one of math's most enduring puzzles: the seemingly paradoxical nature of infinity.Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? The nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's answer to this question not only surprised him but also shook the very foundations upon which math had been built. Cantor's counterintuitive discovery of a progression of larger and larger infinities created controversy in his time and may have hastened his mental breakdown, but it also helped lead to the development of set theory, analytic philosophy, and even computer technology.Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics.

Feel Free: Essays


Zadie Smith - 2018
    She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.Arranged into five sections--In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free--this new collection poses questions we immediately recognize. What is The Social Network--and Facebook itself--really about? "It's a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore." Why do we love libraries? "Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay." What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? "So I might say to her, look: the thing you have to appreciate is that we'd just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes--and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat."Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, "Joy," and, "Find Your Beach," Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith's own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive--and never any less than perfect company. This is literary journalism at its zenith.