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Following the Good River: The Life and Times of Wa'xaid
Par Briony Penn. 2020
Based on recorded interviews and journal entries this major biography of Cecil Paul (Wa’xaid) is a resounding and timely saga…
featuring the trials, tribulations, endurance, forgiveness, and survival of one of North America’s more prominent Indigenous leaders. Born in 1931 in the Kitlope, Cecil Paul, also known by his Xenaksiala name, Wa’xaid, is one of the last fluent speakers of his people’s language. At age ten he was placed in a residential school run by the United Church of Canada at Port Alberni where he was abused. After three decades of prolonged alcohol abuse, he returned to the Kitlope where his healing journey began. He has worked tirelessly to protect the Kitlope, described as the largest intact temperate rainforest watershed in the world. Now in his late 80s, he resides on his ancestors’ traditional territory.Following upon the success of Wa'xaid's own book of personal essays, Stories from the Magic Canoe, Briony Penn's major biography of this remarkable individual will serve as a timely reminder of the state of British Columbia's Indigenous community, the environmental and political strife still facing many Indigenous communities, and the philosophical and personal journey of a remarkable man.Wa'xaid passed away at the age of 90 on December 3, 2020.L'homme qui était Sherlock Holmes: une biographie du Dr Joe Bell
Par Ely Liebow. 2012
« C'est à vous que je dois Sherlock Holmes», écrit Arthur Conan Doyle à son ancien professeur et mentor, le…
docteur Joseph Bell, en 1892. Cet éminent chirurgien, qui enseigna la médecine à l'Université d'Édimbourg, est le père de la fameuse «méthode déductive» qui sera la signature de Sherlock Holmes, l'essence de son mystère et la source de la fascination exercée par le célèbre détective sur tant de générations de lecteurs dans le monde entier. Réputé pour ses fabuleux pouvoirs d'observation, Joseph Bell éblouissait ses contemporains par l'apparente magie de ses déductions, qu'il s'agisse d'établir un diagnostic ou de résoudre les affaires criminelles qu'allaient lui confier plus tard Scotland Yard et la Couronne d'Angleterre. Fruit d'une recherche approfondie, cette biographie de référence relate avec brio l'existence de cet homme remarquable, salué par la communauté médicale et la ville tout entière pour son talent, son dévouement et ce don exceptionnel qu'il allait léguer à son illustre héritier de fiction. » -- 4e de couvScientific breakthroughs that changed the way we understand the world—and the fascinating stories of the scientists behind them Some of…
the most significant breakthroughs in science don&’t receive widespread recognition until decades later, sometimes after their author&’s death. Nobel Prize–winner Max Planck, whose black-body radiation law established the discipline of quantum mechanics, stated this as what has become known as Planck&’s principle, commonly summarized as &“Science progresses one funeral at a time.&” In other words, for some truly groundbreaking discoveries, a new consensus builds only when proponents of the old consensus die off. Breakthrough discoveries require a paradigm shift, and it takes time and new minds for the new paradigm to be adopted. In Innovators, Donald Kirsch tells the stories of sixteen visionary scientists who suffered this fate, some now famous like Max Planck himself, Galileo, and Gregor Mendel, and some less well known. Among them are Barbara McClintock who, working with Indian corn, discovered transposons, also known as jumping genes, which provide a major mechanism driving biological evolution; Rachel Carson, catalyst for the environmental movement; and Roger Revelle, the climatologist whose findings were the first to be described by the term &“global warming.&” The breakthroughs cover fields from biology to medicine to physics and earth sciences and include the discovery of prions, life-changing treatments such as drugs for high blood pressure, ulcers, and organ transplantation; the process of continental drift; and our understanding of how molecules form matter.A Matter of Appearance: A Memoir
Par Emily Wells. 2023
A dazzling memoir of chronic illness that explores the fraught intersection between pain, language, and gender, by a debut author.Emily…
Wells spent her childhood dancing through intense pain she assumed was normal for a ballerina pushing her body to its limits. For years, no doctor could tell Wells what was wrong with her, or they told her it was all in her head.In A Matter of Appearance, Wells traces her journey as she tries to understand and define the chronic pain she has lived with all her life. She draws on the critical works of Freud, Sontag, and others to explore the intersection between gender, pain, and language, and she traces a direct line from the &“hysteria patients&” at the Salpêtrière Hospital in nineteenth-century Paris to the contemporary New Age healers in Los Angeles, her stomping ground. At the crux of Wells&’ literary project is the dilemma of how to diagnose an experience that is both private and public, subjective and quantifiable, and how to express all this in words.&“Gorgeously written and brilliantly argued, A Matter of Appearance uses chronic illness as a lever to investigate the life of a body. It&’s complex, inconclusive, and incredibly clear-eyed. Moving fluidly between histories of psychoanalysis, desire, ambition, pathology, Wells reminds us of the liminal state we all live in between sickness and health.&”—Chris Kraus, author of Aliens & Anorexia and Summer of HateChasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark
Par Greg Skomal, Ret Talbot. 2023
“At last: the story of tracking the ocean’s most charismatic and controversial predator, compellingly told by the man who has…
learned more about the Atlantic great white shark than any other person alive. You must not miss this fantastic book!” —Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an OctopusDr. Greg Skomal, one of the leading great white shark experts in the country, reveals the true nature of these mysterious apex predators, as well as the fascinating story behind their history and startling resurgence With its quaint villages, local restaurants serving up lobster rolls, and miles and miles of warm, sandy beaches, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is famous for being America’s carefree seaside getaway. But in August 2012, the first confirmed white shark attack in almost eighty years occurred in the region. As shark sightings quickly began to increase on Cape Cod and elsewhere, and large beachside billboards warning about the growing shark population became a common sight, a boogie boarder died after being attacked by a great white shark in Cape Cod’s shallow waters.What had changed to cause news of human-shark interactions to go from being a rarity to being the new normal? As some citizens called for shark culls, nets, drone surveillance, and other extreme solutions, interactions between local residents and scientists, politicians, and those responsible for public safety became tense and frantic.Dr. Greg Skomal, a shark biologist whose lifelong passion has been to gain a more refined understanding of great white sharks, was at the center of it all. This is the story of the great white shark’s return to the eastern seaboard, told through the life of the scientist who found himself in the oftentimes thankless position of having to balance conservation efforts and the drive to do important science with panic and fear in the court of public opinion. Greg has spent decades on a quest to tag, track, and demystify this animal, using every high- and low-tech method at his disposal, including those he invented, and he frequently comes face-to-face with these shadows of the deep. He leaves no stone unturned in his pursuit of the secrets behind the largely unknown lives of these charismatic creatures and in his duty to solve the intricate puzzle of how humans can coexist alongside them.Chasing Shadows is a too-rare conservation success story about restoring an apex predator to an ecosystem that provides a profound, new understanding of a beast so notoriously fierce that it’s nearly impossible to imagine how vulnerable it truly is.Einstein in Time and Space: A Life in 99 Particles
Par Samuel Graydon. 1995
Walter Isaacson&’s Einstein meets Craig Brown&’s 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, in this innovative biography of the famous physicist told…
in ninety-nine dazzling vignettes.Most of us would agree that Albert Einstein&’s name is synonymous with &“genius&” and that his likeness is often used as a shorthand for all scientists, appearing everywhere from cartoons to textbooks. He has become more myth than man. That being the case, how best to capture his essence? In Einstein in Time and Space, talented young science journalist Samuel Graydon answers that question with an illuminating mosaic—99 intriguingly different particles that cumulatively reveal Einstein&’s contradictory and multitudinous nature. Glimpsed among these shards: a slacker who failed every subject but math, a job seeker who couldn&’t get hired, a lothario who courted many women, and a charmer who was the life of the party. As brilliant as he was inconsistent, Einstein was simultaneously an avid supporter of the NAACP and the fight for civil rights and someone capable of great prejudice. He was loved by many, known by few, and inspirational to a generation of young physicists. Graydon reveals every corner of Einstein&’s world: the false reporting that rocketed Einstein to fame nearly overnight, his effect on people he met merely in passing, even the remarkable posthumous journey of the famed physicist&’s brain. Entertaining, comforting, bolstering, and shocking, Einstein in Time and Space is the unique story of a man who redefined how we view our universe and our place within it.Diabetes and Me: Living a Healthy and Empowered Life in the Face of Diabetes
Par David Novak, Wendy Louise Novak. 2023
"Children with diabetes can live full, happy, productive lives. I hope my story can stand as proof of that fact."Diagnosed…
with type 1 diabetes at age seven, Wendy Louise Novak had to create her own path in a world defined by stigma, struggle, and hope.With little public awareness of her condition, Wendy's only role model was her fiercely independent father, who grew up in an era when diabetes meant a difficult, and often short, life. He taught her to "follow the rules" and stay self-reliant. That sense of independence carried Wendy through college to a successful career, globetrotting excitement, and a whirlwind romance with her husband, David.Wendy built a loving family as she navigated the highs and lows of a condition that was still widely misunderstood. Despite tough times, she learned to balance following the rules with following her passions, saying, "I never wanted to be the kind of person who stayed home and worried about whether or not I could take it, and so I didn't."Today, Wendy is the face of the Wendy Novak Diabetes Institute, which supports groundbreaking clinical services, education, and research to ensure young people with diabetes can thrive. In this honest but uplifting account of a life well lived, Wendy shares what she has learned, including practical tips for managing diabetes.With a foreword by the author's husband, businessman and philanthropist David Novak, Diabetes and Me shows patients and families that a diagnosis doesn't define your life."There are always ways to experience the joys in life, no matter what it throws at you."Turning: A Year in the Water
Par Jessica J. Lee. 2017
Longlisted for the 2018 Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors&“Jessica J. Lee is a writer of rare and exhilarating grace. In…
Turning, she sounds the depths of lakes and her own life, never flinching from darkness, surfacing to fresh understandings of her place in the welter of natural and human history. A beautiful, moody, bracing debut.&” —Kate Harris, award-winning author of Lands of Lost BordersThrough the heat of summer to the frozen depths of winter, Lee traces her journey swimming through 52 lakes in a single year, swimming through fear and heartbreak to find her place in the worldJessica J. Lee swims through all four seasons and especially loves the winter. "I long for the ice. The sharp cut of freezing water on my feet. The immeasurable black of the lake at its coldest. Swimming then means cold, and pain, and elation." At the age of twenty-eight, Jessica, who grew up in Canada and lived in England, finds herself in Berlin. Alone. Lonely, with lowered spirits thanks to some family history and a broken heart, she is there, ostensibly, to write a thesis. And though that is what she does daily, what increasingly occupies her is swimming. So she makes a decision that she believes will win her back her confidence and independence: she will swim fifty-two of the lakes around Berlin, no matter what the weather or season. She is aware that this particular landscape is not without its own ghosts and history. This is the story of a beautiful obsession: of the thrill of a still, turquoise lake, of cracking the ice before submerging, of floating under blue skies, of tangled weeds and murkiness, of cool, fresh, spring swimming—of facing past fears of near-drowning and of breaking free. When she completes her year of swimming, Jessica finds she has new strength, and she has also found friends and has gained some understanding of how the landscape both haunts and holds us. This book is for everyone who loves swimming, who wishes they could push themselves beyond caution, who understands the deep pleasure of using the body's strength, who knows what it is to abandon all thought and float home to the surface.Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption
Par Patrick Alley. 2022
*****'Reads like a John le Carré novel but is, in fact, very real.' - The Big Issue'Very Bad People would…
be a hugely enjoyable thriller if it wasn't all true.' - Isabella Tree, author of Wilding'Global Witness are fearless.' - Gordon Roddick, Campaigner and Co-Founder of the Body Shop'Part true crime tale, part investigative procedural, this is the account of the brilliant and necessary superheroes of Global Witness, whose superpower is the truth.' - Edward Zwick, Director of Blood Diamond 'Very Bad People reads like a non-stop high-speed chase as our fighters against corruption hunt down a litany of criminals and con-men, some on the fringes of our society, some embedded high up within it. It's a great story and an important one.' - David Farr, Screenwriter, The Night Manager'The story told in this book of three youthful idealists who go from eating cold baked beans in a drafty London flat to the Thai-Cambodian border where they posed as traders in illegally felled timber is simply riveting. Don't miss it.' - Misha Glenny, author of McMafia'Alley has produced a clear-eyed account of a world poisoned by dark money, and a welcome reminder that resistance is possible. As it turns out, his book is even more timely than he could have hoped.' - Irish Times'This book is inspirational. It shows how young people with sufficient passion and intelligence have the capacity to go after some of the most powerful governments and corporations and shame, humiliate and just push governments to support important reforms that can make this a more decent world.' - Frank Vogl, Co-Founder of Transparency InternationalArms trafficking, offshore accounts and luxury property deals. Super-yachts, private jets and super-car collections. Blood diamonds, suspect oil deals, deforestation and murder. This is the world of Global Witness, the award-winning organisation dedicated to rooting out worldwide corruption. And this is co-founder Patrick Alley's revealing inside track on a breath-taking catalogue of modern super-crimes - and the 'shadow network' that enables them. VERY BAD PEOPLE is about following the money, going undercover in the world's most dangerous places, and bringing down the people behind the crimes. Case by case we see maverick investigators pitched against warlords, grifters and super-villains who bear every resemblance to The Night Manager's Richard Roper. One dictator's son spent $700 million in just four years on his luxury lifestyle.As they unravel crooked deals of labyrinthine complexity, the team encounter well-known corporations whose operations are no less criminal than the Mafia. This network of lawyers, bankers and real estate agents help park dirty money in London, New York, or in offshore accounts, safe from prying eyes.Patrick Alley's book is a brilliant, authoritative and fearless investigation into the darkest workings of our world - and an inspiration to all of us who want to fight back.Concorde, A Designer's Life: The Journey to Mach 2
Par Ted Talbot. 2013
Do you remember the time we used to do New York in three hours?Even twenty years after its final flight,…
Concorde remains the pinnacle of aviation design. The aircraft is still unmatched, which has led to a vast swathe of material being written about the aeroplane itself. However, relatively little has been said about the people who designed it.Concorde, A Designer’s Life is an autobiography peppered with anecdotes from the team, humorous life stories and several ‘technibits’, all covering the design period of Concorde. Ted Talbot, who began his career at BAC as an aerodynamicist and later became chief design engineer, has combined the technical narrative with personal and family reminiscences to remind the reader that engineers have lives too.The path to Mach 2 was bumpy, with threats of cancellation and opposition from the Americans and the Russians, but this generally indicated to the Concorde team that they were on the right path! This informative, witty and thoroughly enjoyable peek into an unusual life is a valuable addition to any bookshelf.Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption
Par Patrick Alley. 2022
*****'Reads like a John le Carré novel but is, in fact, very real.' - The Big Issue'Very Bad People would…
be a hugely enjoyable thriller if it wasn't all true.' - Isabella Tree, author of Wilding'Global Witness are fearless.' - Gordon Roddick, Campaigner and Co-Founder of the Body Shop'Part true crime tale, part investigative procedural, this is the account of the brilliant and necessary superheroes of Global Witness, whose superpower is the truth.' - Edward Zwick, Director of Blood Diamond 'Very Bad People reads like a non-stop high-speed chase as our fighters against corruption hunt down a litany of criminals and con-men, some on the fringes of our society, some embedded high up within it. It's a great story and an important one.' - David Farr, Screenwriter, The Night Manager'The story told in this book of three youthful idealists who go from eating cold baked beans in a drafty London flat to the Thai-Cambodian border where they posed as traders in illegally felled timber is simply riveting. Don't miss it.' - Misha Glenny, author of McMafia'Alley has produced a clear-eyed account of a world poisoned by dark money, and a welcome reminder that resistance is possible. As it turns out, his book is even more timely than he could have hoped.' - Irish Times'This book is inspirational. It shows how young people with sufficient passion and intelligence have the capacity to go after some of the most powerful governments and corporations and shame, humiliate and just push governments to support important reforms that can make this a more decent world.' - Frank Vogl, Co-Founder of Transparency InternationalArms trafficking, offshore accounts and luxury property deals. Super-yachts, private jets and super-car collections. Blood diamonds, suspect oil deals, deforestation and murder. This is the world of Global Witness, the award-winning organisation dedicated to rooting out worldwide corruption. And this is co-founder Patrick Alley's revealing inside track on a breath-taking catalogue of modern super-crimes - and the 'shadow network' that enables them. VERY BAD PEOPLE is about following the money, going undercover in the world's most dangerous places, and bringing down the people behind the crimes. Case by case we see maverick investigators pitched against warlords, grifters and super-villains who bear every resemblance to The Night Manager's Richard Roper. One dictator's son spent $700 million in just four years on his luxury lifestyle.As they unravel crooked deals of labyrinthine complexity, the team encounter well-known corporations whose operations are no less criminal than the Mafia. This network of lawyers, bankers and real estate agents help park dirty money in London, New York, or in offshore accounts, safe from prying eyes.Patrick Alley's book is a brilliant, authoritative and fearless investigation into the darkest workings of our world - and an inspiration to all of us who want to fight back.The Homing Instinct: Meaning & Mystery in Animal Migration
Par Bernd Heinrich. 2014
&“A noted naturalist explores the centrality of home in the lives of humans and other animals . . . A special treat for…
readers of natural history&” (Kirkus Reviews). Every year, many species make the journey from one place to another, following the same paths and ending up in the same places. Every year since boyhood, the acclaimed scientist and author Bernd Heinrich has done the same, returning to a beloved patch of western Maine woods. Which led him to wonder: What is the biology in humans of this primal pull toward a particular place, and how is it related to animal homing? In The Homing Instinct, Heinrich explores the fascinating mysteries of animal migration: how geese imprint true visual landscape memory; how scent trails are used by many creatures to locate their homes with pinpoint accuracy; and how even the tiniest of songbirds are equipped for solar and magnetic orienteering over vast distances. And he reminds us that to discount our human emotions toward home is to ignore biology itself. &“A graceful blend of science and memoir . . . [Heinrich&’s] ability to linger and simply be there for the moment when, for instance, an elderly spider descends from a silken strand to take the insect he offers her is the heart of his appeal.&” —Julie Zickefoose, The Wall Street Journal &“Deep and insightful writing.&” —David Gessner, The Washington PostJane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man
Par Dale Peterson. 2007
A biography of the primatologist that “vividly and significantly enriches our understanding of Goodall”—includes photographs (Booklist, starred review).This essential biography…
of one of the most influential women of the past century shows how truly remarkable Jane Goodall’s accomplishments have been. Goodall was a secretarial school graduate when Louis Leakey, unable to find someone with more fitting credentials, first sent her to Gombe to study chimpanzees. In this acclaimed work, Dale Peterson details how this young woman of uncommon resourcefulness and pluck would go on to set radically new standards in the study of animal behavior. He vividly captures the triumphs and setbacks of her dramatic life, including the private quest that led to her now-famous activism.Peterson, a longtime Goodall collaborator, has a unique knowledge of his subject. Candid and illuminating, this work will be a revelation even to readers who are familiar with the public Goodall as presented in her own writing.“Peterson provides colorful descriptions of day-to-day life at Gombe and Goodall’s interaction with the chimps, and ably portrays her relationship with Leakey, the National Geographic Society (which sponsored much of her work), her two marriages, her reaction to her celebrity and her ventures as an activist for the well-being of chimpanzees.” —Publishers Weekly“Captures the spirit of a remarkable woman in science.” —Library Journal (starred review)Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Bks.)
Par William Styron. 1990
The New York Times–bestselling memoir of crippling depression and the struggle for recovery by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie&’s…
Choice.In the summer of 1985, William Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him. Darkness Visible tells the story of Styron&’s recovery, laying bare the harrowing realities of clinical depression and chronicling his triumph over the disease that had claimed so many great writers before him. His final words are a call for hope to all who suffer from mental illness that it is possible to emerge from even the deepest abyss of despair and &“once again behold the stars.&” This ebook features a new illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.Anything for My Child: Making Impossible Decisions for Medically Complex Children
Par Stephanie Nimmo. 2024
Every parent wants the same thing: for their child to enjoy a long and fulfilling life. But what happens when…
things don't go according to plan? What happens when parents have to become advocates for their child's healthcare needs? Who decides what is in a child's 'best interests'?Stephanie Nimmo faced these questions first-hand when her daughter, Daisy, was diagnosed with a life-limiting condition as a baby. Seen through the lens of Stephanie's own experiences, this sensitive book delves into the complex world of medical ethics and paediatric palliative care. From recognising tipping points to the importance of building relationships with palliative care teams well before crisis, this book explores how medical professionals can better support families throughout their child's care.Interviews with clinicians and snapshots from the lives of patients' families provide insight into the realities of life on both sides of the hospital bed. Compassionate explanations of the conflicting pressures in the hospital system foster understanding and help medical professionals and families work together.Elephants: Birth, Life, and Death in the World of the Giants
Par Hannah Mumby. 2020
What Jane Goodall did for chimpanzees, international ecologist and conservation scientist Hannah Mumby now does for elephants in this compelling,…
eye-opening account that brings into focus this species remarkably similar to humans—and makes a persuasive argument for saving them.From early childhood, Dr. Hannah Mumby has loved wildlife, especially elephants. Her first wild elephant sighting at twenty-four changed the course of her life. Since then, she has devoted herself to studying these incredible animals and educating humanity about them. Hannahs field work has taken her around the world, where she has studied many elephant groups, including both orphaned elephants and the solitary elephant males.These remarkable animals have so much to teach us, Mumby argues, and Elephants takes readers into their world as never before, revealing a society as complex as the chimpanzees, maybe even humans. Mumby's exploration of elephant culture provides an empathetic, humanistic portrait of these majestic animals, illuminating their personalities, memories, and rich emotional lives. Mumby explains how elephants communicate with one another and demonstrates the connection between memory and trauma—how it affects individual elephants and their interactions with others in their herd. Elephants and humans, Mumby makes clear, are not very different. From emotional bonding to communication, human and elephant experience similarly nuanced lives, and the commonalities she uncovers are both surprising and heartwarming.Featuring a 16-page color insert of original photography, Elephants is a captivating, deeply moving exploration that offers a new way to look at these pachyderms and ourselves and a persuasive, passionate argument for rethinking our approach to animals and their conservation.A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain (Political Economy of the Austrian #8)
Par Christina Crosby. 2016
A woman's fight to reclaim her body after a paralysis-inducing cycling accidentIn the early evening on October 1, 2003, Christina…
Crosby was three miles into a seventeen mile bicycle ride, intent on reaching her goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. She was a respected senior professor of English who had celebrated her fiftieth birthday a month before. As she crested a hill, she caught a branch in the spokes of her bicycle, which instantly pitched her to the pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow, and her head snapped back. In that instant, she was paralyzed.In A Body, Undone, Crosby puts into words a broken body that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She writes about a body shot through with neurological pain, disoriented in time and space, incapacitated by paralysis and deadened sensation. To address this foreign body, she calls upon the readerly pleasures of narrative, critical feminist and queer thinking, and the concentrated language of lyric poetry. Working with these resources, she recalls her 1950s tomboy ways in small-town, rural Pennsylvania, and records growing into the 1970s through radical feminism and the affirmations of gay liberation.Deeply unsentimental, Crosby communicates in unflinching prose the experience of "diving into the wreck" of her body to acknowledge grief, and loss, but also to recognize the beauty, fragility, and dependencies of all human bodies. A memoir that is a meditation on disability, metaphor, gender, sex, and love, A Body, Undone is a compelling account of living on, as Crosby rebuilds her body and fashions a life through writing, memory, and desire.Because We Are Bad: OCD and a Girl Lost in Thought
Par Lily Bailey. 2016
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year“One of the best [books] I have read on the phenomenology of OCD.”…
—Scott Stossel, the Washington Post Written with the indelible power of Girl, Interrupted, Brain on Fire, and Reasons to Stay Alive, a lyrical, poignant memoir by a young woman about her childhood battle with debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder, and her hard-won journey to recovery.By the age of thirteen, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. She had killed someone with a thought, spread untold disease, and ogled the bodies of other children. Only by performing an exhausting series of secret routines could she make up for what she’d done. But no matter how intricate or repetitive, no act of penance was ever enough.Beautifully written and astonishingly intimate, Because We Are Bad recounts a childhood consumed by obsessive compulsive disorder. As a child, Bailey created a second personality inside herself—"I" became "we"—to help manifest compulsions that drove every minute of every day of her young life. Now she writes about the forces beneath her skin, and how they ordered, organized, and urged her forward. Lily charts her journey, from checking on her younger sister dozens of times a night, to "normalizing" herself at school among new friends as she grew older, and finally to her young adult years, learning—indeed, breaking through—to make a way for herself in a big, wide world that refuses to stay in check.Charming and raw, harrowing and redemptive, Because We Are Bad is an illuminating and uplifting look into the mind and soul of an extraordinary young woman, and a startling portrait of OCD that allows us to see and understand this condition as never before.Missions to Mars: A New Era of Rover and Spacecraft Discovery on the Red Planet
Par Larry Crumpler. 2021
From a long-term planning lead for the Mars Exploration Rover Project comes this vivid insider account of some of NASA’s…
most vital and exciting missions to the Red Planet, illustrated with full-color photographs—a wondrous chronicle of unprecedented scientific discovery and the search for evidence of life on Mars. “There are probably just a few of moments in human history when a small group of humans stood on the margins of a vast new world, and it is no stretch of the romantic imagination that the arrival of two rovers on the surface of another planet was surely one of them.”Human exploration of Mars is the most ambitious and exciting scientific goal of the twenty-first century. Few people know as much about this fascinating planet as Dr. Larry Crumpler. As one of the long-term planning leads for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, he helped control the daily communications between NASA and the rovers roaming the planet to gather scientific data. Thanks to the Rover Project, we now know that the dry, red dust of the planet’s surface hides a wet, possibly living history, and that conditions were present for the evolution of complex, organic life. In this magnificent compendium, Dr. Crumpler recounts the history of the Red Planet, from the earliest days when ancient astronomers turned their eyes to the heavens to the breakthrough discoveries being unearthed by modern technology today, including some of the first images from the latest rover, Perseverance. Paired with stunning, full-color photographs taken by rovers and NASA satellites images, this magnificent “biography” of the red planet allows us to understand and experience it as never before. When the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers landed on Mars in January 2004, scientists expected them to function for 90 days. But those three months turned into fifteen years. With data gathered by the rovers, Dr. Crumpler and his fellow team members were able to reconstruct the planet’s stunning geological past, when it was once inundated with water, and perhaps could have supported microbial life. Dr Crumpler also reveals the joys and demands of life as a scientist taking part in these historic missions. Exploring fundamental questions about this remarkable planet that have intrigued us earthlings for years, Missions to Mars illuminates Mars’ significance in the solar system—and the human imagination.The Raven's Nest: An Icelandic Journey Through Light and Darkness
Par Sarah Thomas. 2022
Visiting Iceland as an anthropologist and film-maker in 2008, Sarah Thomas is spellbound by its otherworldly landscape. An immediate love…
for this country and for Bjarni, a man she meets there, turns a week-long stay into a transformative half-decade, one which radically alters Sarah's understanding of herself and of the living world.She embarks on a relationship not only with Bjarni, but with the light, the language, and the old wooden house they make their home. She finds a place where the light of the midwinter full moon reflected by snow can be brighter than daylight, where the earth can tremor at any time, and where the word for echo - bergmá l - translates as 'the language of the mountain'. In the midst of crisis both personal and planetary, as her marriage falls apart, Sarah finds inspiration in the artistry of a raven's nest: a home which persists through breaking and reweaving - over and over.Written in beautifully vivid prose The Raven's Nest is a profoundly moving meditation on place, identity and how we might live in an era of environmental disruption.