LibGuides: Booklists for Adults & Teens: Booklists for Adults & Teens

poetry month

National Poetry Month

New and Novel Poetry Collections

Poem in Your Pocket Day 2024 is April 18!

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi Named A Most Anticipated Book by: LitHub * Vulture * Time * A PW 2022 Holiday Gift Pick  One of: Time's "100 Must-Read Books of 2022" * NPR's 2022 "Books We Love" Vulture's "10 Best Books of 2022" A Goodreads Readers Choice Award Semifinalist From acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds--past, present, and future. Choi's third book features poems about historical and impending apocalypses, alongside musings on our responsibilities to each other and visions for our collective survival. Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples. With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time--from Korean comfort women during World War II, to the precipice of climate crisis, to children wandering a museum in the future. These poems explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. As she wrestles with the daily griefs and distances of this apocalyptic world, Choi also imagines what togetherness--between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest--could look like. Bringing together Choi's signature speculative imagination with even greater musicality than her previous work, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On ultimately charts new paths toward hope in the aftermaths, and visions for our collective survival. 
Blud by Rachel McKibbens "Throughout [BLUD], McKibbens breathes brilliant life into language, forging lush, rhythmic poems that are both fiercely urgent and tightly controlled, dark and flickering with fairy-tale-like magic. . . . Stunning, unflinching, fearless."âe*Booklist Starred Review "Chicana poet, activist, and witchy folk hero of the disenfranchised. . . . [McKibbens] creates these spaces of witness with her feral and boundary-pushing poems that speak unflinchingly of topics often swept under the rug: rape, domestic violence, body shaming, mental illness, prejudice."--Ploughshares "McKibbens, a pioneer in the art of performance poetry, presents her audience [with] selfless honesty."--The Rumpus "Rachel McKibbens . . . reminds us why poetry as testimony is so necessary." --Poetry Foundation McKibbens'sblud is a collection of dark, rhythmic poems interested in the ways in which inherited things--bloodlines, mental illnesses, trauma--affect their inheritors. Reveling in form and sound, McKibbens's writing takes back control, undaunted by the idea of sinking its teeth into the ugliest moments of life, while still believing--and looking for--the good underneath all the bruising. From "untitled (lost love)": To my daughters I need to say: Go with the one who loves you biblically. The one whose love lifts its head to you despite its broken neck. Whose body bursts sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle the way old grief is gentle. Love the love that is messy in all its too much . . . Rachel McKibbens is a poet, activist, playwright, essayist, and two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow. She is the author of four books and founder of The Pink Door, an annual writing retreat open exclusively to women of color. She lives in Rochester, New York.

Orlam by P. J. Harvey Nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles lives on Hook Farm in the village of UNDERWHELEM. Next to the farm is Gore Woods, Ira's sanctuary, overseen by Orlam, the all-seeing lamb's eyeball who is Ira-Abel's guardian and protector. Here, drawing on the rituals, children's songs, chants and superstitions of the rural West Country of England, Ira-Abel creates the twin realm through which she can make sense of an increasingly confusing and frightening world.Orlam follows Ira and the inhabitants of UNDERWHELEM month by month through the last year of her childhood innocence. The result is a poem-sequence of light and shadow - suffused with hints of violence, sexual confusion and perversion, the oppression of family, but also ecstatic moments in sunlit clearings, song and bawdy humour. The broad theme is ultimately one of love - carried by Ira's personal Christ, the constantly bleeding soldier-ghost Wyman-Elvis, who bears 'The Word': Love Me Tender.Orlam is not only a remarkable coming-of-age tale, but the first full-length book written in the Dorset dialect for many decades. Orlam also reveals P J Harvey as not only one of the most talented songwriters of the age, but a gifted poet - whose formal skill, transforming eye and ear for the lyric line has produced a strange and moving poem like no other.
Human Resources by Ryann Stevenson Winner of the Max Ritvo PoetryPrize, Ryann Stevenson's Human Resources is a sobering andperceptive portrait of technology's impact on connection and power. Human Resources followsa woman working in the male-dominated world of AI, designing women that don'texist. In discerning verse, she workshops thefacial characteristics of a floating head named "Nia," who her boss calls "histype"; she loses hours researching "June," an oddly sexualized artificiallyintelligent oven; and she spends a whole day "trying to break" a femaleself-improvement bot. Thespeaker of Stevenson's poems grapples with uneasiness and isolation, even asshe endeavors to solve for these problems in her daily work. She attempts toharness control by eating clean, doing yoga, and searching for age-defying skincare, though she dreams "about the department / that women get reassigned toafter they file / harassment complaints." With sharp, lyrical intelligence, sheimagines alternative realities where women exist not for the whims of men butfor their own--where they become literal skyscrapers, towering over a world thatnever appreciated them. Chilling and lucid, HumanResources challenges the minds programming our present and future to considerwhat serves the collective good. Something perhaps more thoughtful and human,Stevenson writes: "I want to say better."
How to Pull Apart the Earth by Karla Cordero FINALIST OF THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARDS WINNER OF THE 2019 SAN DEIGO BOOK AWARDS AWARD-WINNING FINALIST IN THE POETRY CATEGORY OF 2019 INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS How to Pull Apart the Earth is an homage to the intrinsic thread that weaves the culture of Mexico together with the United States, and the echo of colonization that works to erase it. Cordero skillfully exemplifies the complexity & beauty of growing up in a borderland, and the sacrifices paid for the dream.
Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Gluck WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE The collected works of the inimitable Pulitzer Prize-winning poet It is the astonishment of Louise Glück's poetry that it resists collection. With each successive book her drive to leave behind what came before has grown more fierce, the force of her gaze fixed on what has yet to be imagined. She invented a form to accommodate this need, the book-length sequence of poems, like a landscape seen from above, a novel with lacunae opening onto the unspeakable. The reiterated yet endlessly transfigured elements in this landscape--Persephone, a copper beech, a mother and father and sister, a garden, a husband and son, a horse, a dog, a field on fire, a mountain--persistently emerge and reappear with the dark energy of the inevitable, shot through with the bright aspect of things new-made. From the outset ("Come here / Come here, little one"), Gluck's voice has addressed us with deceptive simplicity, the poems in lines so clear we "do not see the intervening fathoms." From within the earth's bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness my friend the moon rises: she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful? To read these books together is to understand the governing paradox of a life lived in the body and of the work wrested from it, the one fated to die and the other to endure.
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire "The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts."--Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist "Shire is the real thing--fresh, cutting, indisputably alive."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly Mama, I made it / out of your home / alive, raised by / the voices / in my head. With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own way toward womanhood. Drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life, full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life, full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life, full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl. The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed.
Urban Tumbleweed by Harryette Mullen "Harryette Mullen is a magician of words, phrases, and songs . . . No voice in contemporary poetry is quite as original, cosmopolitan, witty, and tragic." --Susan Stewart, citation for the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Urban tumbleweed, some people call it, discarded plastic bag we see in every city blown down the street with vagrant wind. --fromUrban Tumbleweed Urban Tumbleweed is the poet Harryette Mullen's exploration of spaces where the city and the natural world collide. Written out of a daily practice of walking, Mullen's stanzas adapt the traditional Japanese tanka, a poetic form suited for recording fleeting impressions, describing environmental transitions, and contemplating the human being's place in the natural world. But, as she writes in her preface, "What is natural about being human? What to make of a city dweller taking a 'nature walk' in a publicpark while listening to a podcast with ear-bud headphones?"
When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz "I writehungry sentences," Natalie Diaz once explained in an interview, "because they want more and more lyricism and imagery to satisfy them." This debut collection is a fast-paced tour of Mojave life and family narrative: A sister fights for or against a brother on meth, and everyone from Antigone, Houdini, Huitzilopochtli, and Jesus is invoked and invited to hash it out. These darkly humorous poems illuminate far corners of the heart, revealing teeth, tails, and more than a few dreams. I watched a lion eat a man like a piece of fruit, peel tendons from fascia like pith from rind, then lick the sweet meat from its hard core of bones. The man had earned this feast and his own deliciousness by ringing a stick against the lion's cage, calling out Here, Kitty Kitty, Meow! With one swipe of a paw much like a catcher's mitt with fangs, the lion pulled the man into the cage, rattling his skeleton against the metal bars. The lion didn't want to do it-- He didn't want to eat the man like a piece of fruit and he told the crowd this: I only wanted some goddamn sleep . . . Natalie Diaz was born and raised on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation in Needles, California. After playing professional basketball for four years in Europe and Asia, Diaz returned to the states to complete her MFA at Old Dominion University. She lives in Surprise, Arizona, and is working to preserve the Mojave language.
Bestiary by Donika Kelly Donika Kelly's fierce debut collection, longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award and winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize I thought myself lion and serpent. Thought myself body enough for two, for we. Found comfort in never being lonely. What burst from my back, from my bones, what lived along the ridge from crown to crown, from mane to forked tongue beneath the skin. What clamor we made in the birthing. What hiss and rumble at the splitting, at the horns and beard, at the glottal bleat. What bridges our back. What strong neck, what bright eye. What menagerie are we. What we've made of ourselves. --from "Love Poem: Chimera" Across this remarkable first book are encounters with animals, legendary beasts, and mythological monsters--half human and half something else. Donika Kelly'sBestiary is a catalogue of creatures--from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel, from "Out West" to "Back East." Lurking in the middle of this powerful and multifaceted collection is a wrenching sequence that wonders just who or what is the real monster inside this life of survival and reflection. Selected and with an introduction by the National Book Award winner Nikky Finney,Bestiary questions what makes us human, what makes us whole.
Revenge Body by Rachel Wiley; Sam Van Cook (Editor) Revenge Body is Rachel Wiley's third collection of poetry, full of the sharp wit and bold honesty we know and love from Rachel. Wiley invites her readers to join her on a journey filled with righteous anger, Black identity, magic, mental health, navigating maternal relationships, and the love and loss that comes from a breakup.
Thrall by Natasha Trethewey The stunning follow-up volume to Natasha Trethewey's Pulitzer Prize-winning Native Guard, by the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States. Natasha Trethewey's poems are at once deeply personal and historical--exploring her own interracial and complicated roots--and utterly American, connecting them to ours. The daughter of a black mother and white father, a student of history and of the Deep South, she is inspired by everything from colonial paintings of mulattos and mestizos to the stories of people forgotten by history. Meditations on captivity, knowledge, and inheritance permeate Thrall, as she reflects on a series of small estrangements from her poet father and comes to an understanding of how, as father and daughter, they are part of the ongoing history of race in America. Thrall confirms not only that Natasha Trethewey is one of our most gifted and necessary poets but that she is also one of our most brilliant and fearless.
Incarnadine by Mary Szybist Winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry * An NPR, Slate, Oregonian, Kansas City Star, Willamette Week, and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * Amazon's Best Book of the Year in Poetry 2013 * In Incarnadine, Mary Szybist restlessly seeks out places where meaning might take on new color. One poem is presented as a diagrammed sentence. Another is an abecedarium made of lines of dialogue spoken by girls overheard while assembling a puzzle. Several poems arrive as a series of Annunciations, while others purport to give an update on Mary, who must finish the dishes before she will open herself to God. One poem appears on the page as spokes radiating from a wheel, or as a sunburst, or as the cycle around which all times and all tenses are alive in this moment. Szybist's formal innovations are matched by her musical lines, by her poetry's insistence on singing as a lure toward the unknowable. Inside these poems is a deep yearning--for love, motherhood, the will to see things as they are and to speak. Beautiful and inventive, Incarnadine is the new collection by one of America's most ambitious poets.
More Fiya: A New Collection of Black British Poetry by edited by Kayo Chingonyi
Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans A literary coming-of-age poetry collection, an ode to the places we call home, and a piercingly intimate deconstruction of daughterhood, Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing. From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself - and us - home.
Build Yourself a Boat by Camonghne Felix "Camonghne Felix is a brilliant writer, thinker, imaginer, builder--a young leader who shifts and opens the possibilities for a more just, better lit world, with each step, each word, each question." --Kathy Engel This is about what grows through the wreckage. This is an anthem of survival and a look at what might come after. A view of what floats and what, ultimately, sustains. Build Yourself a Boat redefines the language of collective and individual trauma through lyric and memory. Camonghne Felix is a poet, political strategist, media junkie, and cultural worker. She received an MA in arts politics from NYU, an MFA from Bard College, and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Poets House. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of the chapbook Yolk and was listed by Black Youth Project as a "Black Girl from the Future You Should Know."
Lima :: Limón by Natalie Scenters-Zapico BuzzFeed's Books Coming in 2019 That You'll Want To Keep On Your Radar NPR's 2019 Poetry Preview NBC's 8 Excellent Latino Poetry Books for National Poetry Month The Rumpus's Books To Read in 2019 Remezcla's 8 Books to Read this Year Bustle's Most Anticipated Books of 2019 Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Poetry Books To Read For Spring 2019 "Through a range of forms--tercets, prose hybrids, lyric strophes, and more--the poems in Scenters-Zapico's second collection . . . incisively interrogate the aesthetics of cultural difference." âe*Publishers Weekly, starred reviewIn her striking second collection, Natalie Scenters-Zapico sets her unflinching gaze once again on the borders of things. Lima :: LimÃ³n illuminates both the sweet and the sour of the immigrant experience, of life as a woman in the U.S. and Mexico, and of the politics of the present day. Drawing inspiration from the music of her childhood, her lyrical poems focus on the often-tested resilience of women. Scenters-Zapico writes heartbreakingly about domestic violence and its toxic duality of macho versus hembra, of masculinity versus femininity, and throws into harsh relief the all-too-normalized pain that women endure. Her sharp verse and intense anecdotes brand her poems into the reader; images like the Virgin Mary crying glass tears and a border fence that leaves never-healing scars intertwine as she stares down femicide and gang violence alike. Unflinching, Scenters-Zapico highlights the hardships and stigma immigrants face on both sides of the border, her desire to create change shining through in every line. Lima :: LimÃ³n is grounding and urgent, a collection that speaks out against violence and works toward healing.
Playlist for the Apocalypse by Rita Dove Finalist for the 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry A piercing, unflinching new volume offers necessary music for our tumultuous present, from "perhaps the best public poet we have" (Boston Globe). In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America's, and the world's, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or the contemporary efforts of Black Lives Matter, a girls' night clubbing in the shadow of World War II or the doomed nobility of Muhammad Ali's conscious objector stance, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history's grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives. Meticulously orchestrated and musical in its forms, Playlist for the Apocalypse collects a dazzling array of voices: an elevator operator simmers with resentment, an octogenarian dances an exuberant mambo, a spring cricket philosophizes with mordant humor on hip hop, critics, and Valentine's Day. Calamity turns all too personal in the book's final section, "Little Book of Woe," which charts a journey from terror to hope as Dove learns to cope with debilitating chronic illness. At turns audaciously playful and grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to catastrophic failures of the human soul. Listen up, the poet says, speaking truth to power; what you'll hear in return is "a lifetime of song."
Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr Mary Karr describes herself as a black-belt sinner, and this -- her fourth collection of poems --traces her improbable journey from the inferno of a tormented childhood into a resolutely irreverent Catholicism. Not since Saint Augustine wrote "Give me chastity, Lord -- but not yet!" has anyone brought such smart-assed hilarity to a conversion story. Karr's battle is grounded in common loss (a bitter romance, friends' deaths, a teenage son's leaving home) as well as in elegies for a complicated mother. The poems disarm with the arresting humor familiar to readers of her memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry. An illuminating cycle of spiritual poems have roots in Karr's eight-month tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and as an afterword, her celebrated essay on faith weaves the tale of how the language of poetry, which relieved her suffering so young, eventually became the language of prayer. Those of us who fret that poetry denies consolation will find clear-eyed joy in this collection.
Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido National Book Award Finalist Stay, Illusion, the much-anticipated volume of poems by Lucie Brock-Broido, illuminates the broken but beautiful world she inhabits. Her poems are lit with magic and stark with truth: whether they speak from the imagined dwelling of her "Abandonarium," or from habitats where animals are farmed and harmed "humanely," or even from the surreal confines of death row, they find a voice like no other--dazzling, intimate, startling, heartbreaking. Eddying between the theater of the lavish and the enigmatic, between the gaudy and the unadorned, Brock-Broido's verse scours America for material to render unflinchingly the here and now. Grandeur devolves into a comic irony: "We have come to terms with our Self / Like a marmoset getting out of her Great Ape suit." She dares the unexplained: "The wings were left ajar / At the altar where I've knelt all night, trembling, leaning, rough / As sugar raw, and sweet." Each poem is a rebellious chain of words: "Be good, they said, and so too I was / Good until I was not." Strange narratives, interior and exterior, make a world that is foreign and yet our own; like Dickinson, Brock-Broido constructs a spider-sibling, commanding the "silk spool of the recluse as she confects her eventual mythomania." And why create the web? Because: "If it is written down, you can't rescind it."
Head off and Split by Nikky Finney Winner, 2011 National Book Award for Poetry Winner, 2012 GCLS Award for Poetry Winner, 2012 SIBA Book Award for Poetry Nominee, 2012 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry The poems in Nikky Finney's breathtaking new collection Head Off & Split sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African American life: from civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. Finney's poetic voice is defined by an intimacy that holds a soft yet exacting eye on the erotic, on uncanny political and family events, like her mother's wedding waltz with South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, and then again on the heartbreaking hilarity of an American president's final State of the Union address.    Artful and intense, Finney's poems ask us to be mindful of what we fraction, fragment, cut off, dice, dishonor, or throw away, powerfully evoking both the lawless and the sublime.
How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton by Lucille Clifton; Aracelis Girmay (Editor) How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates both familiar and lesser-known works by one of America's most beloved poets, including 10 newly discovered poems that have never been collected. These poems celebrating black womanhood and resilience shimmer with intellect, insight, humor, and joy, all in Clifton's characteristic style--a voice that the late Toni Morrison described as "seductive with the simplicity of an atom, which is to say highly complex, explosive underneath an apparent quietude." Selected and introduced by award-winning poet Aracelis Girmay, this volume of Clifton's poetry is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today's tumultuous moment.
Collected Poems by Sonia Sanchez A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning 4 decades of her literary career. Winner Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career. Gathering highlights from all of Sonia Sanchez's poetry, this compilation is sure to inspire love and community engagement among her legions of fans. Beginning with her earliest work, including poems from her first volume, Homecoming (1969), through to 2019, the poet has collected her favorite work in all forms of verse, from Haiku to excerpts from book-length narratives. Her lifelong dedication to the causes of Black liberation, social equality, and women's rights is evident throughout, as is her special attention to youth in poems addressed to children and young adults. As Maya Angelou so aptly put it- "Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature's forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly."
Not Here by Hieu Minh Nguyen Not Here is a flight plan for escape and a map for navigating home; a queer Vietnamese American body in confrontation with whiteness, trauma, family, and nostalgia; and a big beating heart of a book. Nguyen's poems ache with loneliness and desire and the giddy terrors of allowing yourself to hope for love, and revel in moments of connection achieved.
A Nail the Evening Hangs On by Monica Sok In her debut collection, Monica Sok uses poetry to reshape a family's memory about the Khmer Rouge regime--memory that is both real and imagined--according to a child of refugees. Driven by myth-making and fables, the poems examine the inheritance of the genocide and the profound struggles of searing grief and PTSD. Though the landscape of Cambodia is always present, it is the liminal space, the in-betweenness of diaspora, in which younger generations must reconcile their history and create new rituals. A Nail the Evening Hangs On seeks to reclaim the Cambodian narrative with tenderness and an imagination that moves towards wholeness and possibility.
This Is the Honey by Kwame Alexander In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of anthems for our time, at turns tender and piercing, and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Claudia Rankine, Ross Gay, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Amanda Gorman, Terrance Hayes, and Nikki Giovanni, This is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy. This essential collection, in the tradition of Dudley Randall's The Black Poets and E. Ethelbert Miller's In Search of Color Everywhere, contains poems exploring joy, love, origin, resistance, and praise. Jacqueline A.Trimble likens "Black woman joy" with indigo, tassels, foxes, and peacock plumes. Tyree Day, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of "home" through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. Clint Smith, Rachel Long, and Cameron Awkward-Rich enfold us in their intimate musings on love and devotion. From "jewels in the hand" (Patricia Spears Jones) to "butter melting in small pools in the hearts" (Elizabeth Alexander), This is the Honey drips with poignant and delightful imagery, music and raised fists. Marilyn Nelson puts it this way in "How I Discovered Poetry:" "It was like soul-kissing, the way the words / filled my mouth." This is the Honey is definitive, fresh, and deeply moving, a must-have for any lover of language and a gift for our time.
Pretty Boys Are Poisonous by Megan Fox THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Megan Fox showcases her wicked humor throughout a heartbreaking and dark collection of poetry. Over the course of more than seventy poems Fox chronicles all the ways in which we fit ourselves into the shape of the ones we love, even if it means losing ourselves in the process. "These poems were written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence. I've spent my entire life keeping the secrets of men, my body aches from carrying the weight of their sins. My freedom lives in these pages, and I hope that my words can inspire others to take back their happiness and their identity by using their voice to illuminate what's been buried, but not forgotten, in the darkness," says Fox. Pretty Boys Are Poisonous marks the powerful debut from one of the most well-known women of our time. Turn the page, bite the apple, and sink your teeth into the most deliciously compelling and addictive books you'll read all year.
The Iliad by Homer; Emily Wilson (Translator) When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017--revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was "fresh, unpretentious and lean" (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)--critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer's other great epic--the most revered war poem of all time. The Iliad roars with the clamor of arms, the bellowing boasts of victors, the fury and grief of loss, and the anguished cries of dying men. It sings, too, of the sublime magnitude of the world--the fierce beauty of nature and the gods' grand schemes beyond the ken of mortals. In Wilson's hands, this thrilling, magical, and often horrifying tale now gallops at a pace befitting its legendary battle scenes, in crisp but resonant language that evokes the poem's deep pathos and reveals palpably real, even "complicated," characters--both human and divine. The culmination of a decade of intense engagement with antiquity's most surpassingly beautiful and emotionally complex poetry, Wilson's Iliad now gives us a complete Homer for our generation.
The Asking by Jane Hirshfield The long-awaited new and selected collection by the author of "some of the most important poetry in the world today" (The New York Times Magazine), assaying the ranges of our shared and borrowed lives: our bonds of eros and responsibilities to the planet; the singing dictions and searchlight dimensions of perception; the willing plunge into an existence both perishing and beloved, dazzling "even now, even here" In an era of algorithm, assertion, silo, and induced distraction, Jane Hirshfield's poems bring a much-needed awakening response, actively countering narrowness. The Asking takes its title from the close of one of its thirty-one new poems: "don't despair of this falling world, not yet / didn't it give you the asking." Interrogating language and life, pondering beauty amid bewilderment and transcendence amid transience, Hirshfield offers a signature investigation of the conditions, contradictions, uncertainties, and astonishments that shape our existence. A leading advocate for the biosphere and the alliance of science and imagination, she brings to both inner and outer quandaries an abiding compass: the choice to embrace what is, to face with courage, curiosity, and a sense of kinship whatever comes.             In poems that consider the smallest ant and the vastness of time, hunger and bounty, physics, war, and love in myriad forms, this collection--drawing from nine previous books and five decades of writing--brings the insights and slant-lights that come to us only through poetry's arc, delve, and tact; through a vision both close and sweeping; through music-inflected thought and recombinant leap.             With its quietly magnifying brushwork and numinous clarities, The Asking expands our awareness of both breakage's grief and the possibility for repair.
Falling Back in Love with Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom A national bestseller in Canada, hailed by The New York Times as an "intimate expression of self-acceptance and forgiveness, tenderly written to fellow trans women and others." "Required reading."--Glennon Doyle, #1 bestselling author of Untamed A THEM AND AUTOSTRADDLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR What happens when we imagine loving the people--and the parts of ourselves--that we do not believe are worthy of love? Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she's always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred. But then Kai Cheng found herself in a crisis of faith, overwhelmed by the viciousness with which people treated one another, and barely clinging to the values and ideals she'd built her life around: justice, hope, love, and healing. Rather than succumb to despair and cynicism, she gathered all her rage and grief and took one last leap of faith: she wrote. Whether prayers or spells or poems--and whether there's a difference--she wrote to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin. She wrote to flawed but nonetheless lovable men, to people with good intentions who harm their own, to racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. What emerged was a blueprint for falling back in love with being human.
Mimosa Trees Bloom by Jeanne Favret Mimosa Trees Bloom is a gathering of poems and images from author Jeanne Marie Favret. A follow-up to Catalpa Trees Bloom, her debut collection of haiku, this second book of longer poems with photographs is a wide lens look into the journey of a lively spirited woman.
Wicked Enchantment by Wanda Coleman; Terrance Hayes (Editor) ONE OF THE YEAR'S BEST--The New York Times and Washington Post A voice for justice, anti-racism, and equality--here is the greatest and most powerful work of the people's poet, Wanda Coleman. Coleman was a beat-up, broke, and Black woman who wrote with anger, humor, and clarity. Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems is a selection of 130 of her poems, edited and introduced by Terrance Hayes. Rejected by the elites during her lifetime, here's what people are saying now: --One of the year's best! "These poems are wildly fun and inventive . . . and frequently hilarious; they seem to cover every human experience and emotion."--New York Times --Winner, California Independent Bookseller Alliance 'Golden Poppy' Book Award 2020 --"Required Reading" Bustle --"One of the greatest poets ever to come out of L.A." The New Yorker --One of the year's best! "Fantastically entertaining and deeply engaging...potent distillations of creative rage, social critique, and subversive wit."--Washington Post --"Her work pushes us to confront injustice with as much candor as she did."--Poetry A self-made writer from Black Los Angeles, Wanda Coleman made art while living every day with racism, poverty, violence. Her triumph is in words that endure. It's time for Coleman's courageous, impassioned, inspiring, one-of-a-kind voice to reach readers everywhere.
Words Like Thunder by Lois Beardslee Words like Thunder: New and Used Anishinaabe Prayers is a collection of poetry by award-winning Ojibwe author Lois Beardslee. Much of the book centers around Native people of the Great Lakes but has a universal relevance to modern indigenous people worldwide. Beardslee tackles contemporary topics like climate change and socioeconomic equality with a grace and readability that empowers readers and celebrates the strengths of today's indigenous peoples. She transforms the mundane into the sacred. Similar in style to Nikki Giovanni, Beardslee might lure in readers with the promise of traditional cultural material, even stereotypes, before quickly pivoting toward a direction of respect for the contemporaneity and adaptability of indigenous people's tenacious hold on traditions. Made up of four sections, the book is like a piece of artwork. Parts of the word-canvas are quiet so the reader can rest and other parts lead the reader quickly from one place to another, while always maintaining eye contact. More than anything, Beardslee emphasizes the notion that indigenous peoples are competent and wonderful, worthy of praise, and whose modernity is a function of their survival. She writes unapologetically with a strong ethnic identity as a woman of color who witnessed and experienced community loss of resources that defined her culture. Her stories transcend generations, time, and geographical boundaries-varying in voice between first person or that of her elders or children-resulting in a collective appeal. Beardslee continues to break the mold and push the boundaries of contemporary Native American poetry and prose. This book will appeal to a general readership, to people who want to learn more about indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes, and to people who care about the environment and socioeconomic equality. Even young readers, especially students of color, will find parts of this book to which they can relate.
The Octopus Museum by Brenda Shaughnessy Now in paperback, this collection of bold and scathingly beautiful feminist poems imagines what comes after our current age of environmental destruction, racism, sexism, and divisive politics. Informed as much by Brenda Shaughnessy's worst fears as a mother as they are by her superb craft as a poet, the poems in The Octopus Museum blaze forth from her pen- in these pages, we see that what was once a generalized fear for our children is now hyper-reasonable, specific, and multiple- school shootings, nuclear attack, loss of health care, a polluted planet. As Shaughnessy conjures our potential future, she movingly (and often with humor) envisions an age where cephalopods might rule over humankind, a fate she suggests we may just deserve after destroying their oceans. These heartbreaking, terrified poems are the battle cry of a woman who is fighting for the survival of the world she loves, and a stirring exhibition of who we are as a civilization.
If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar "A debut poetry collection showcasing both a fierce and tender new voice."--Booklist "Elegant and playful . . . The poet invents new forms and updates classic ones."--Elle "[Fatimah] Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces by which identity is fixed or flexible."--The New Yorker NAMED ONE OF THE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY * FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD an aunt teaches me how to tell an edible flower from a poisonous one. just in case, I hear her say, just in case. From a co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls comes an imaginative, soulful debut poetry that collection captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America. Orphaned as a child, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while also exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people's histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging. Praise for If They Come for Us "In forms both traditional . . . and unorthodox . . . Asghar interrogates divisions along lines of nationality, age, and gender, illuminating the forces by which identity is fixed or flexible. Most vivid and revelatory are pieces such as 'Boy,' whose perspicacious turns and irreverent idiom conjure the rich, jagged textures of a childhood shadowed by loss."--The New Yorker "[Asghar's] debut poetry collection cemented her status as one of the city's greatest present-day poets. . . . A stunning work of art that tackles place, race, sexuality and violence. These poems--both personal and historical, both celebratory and aggrieved--are unquestionably powerful in a way that would doubtless make both Gwendolyn Brooks and Harriet Monroe proud."--Chicago Review of Books  "Taut lines, vivid language, and searing images range cover to cover. . . . Inventive, sad, gripping, and beautiful."--Library Journal (starred review)
Call Number: eBook
A God at the Door by Tishani Doshi "We are homesick everywhere," writes Tishani Doshi, "even when we're home." With aching empathy, righteous anger, and rebellious humor, A God at the Door calls on the extraordinary minutiae of nature and humanity to redefine belonging and unveil injustice. In an era of pandemic lockdown and brutal politics, these poems make vital space for what must come next-the return of wonder and free movement, and a profound sense of connection to what matters most. From a microscopic cell to flightless birds, to a sumo wrestler and the tree of life, Doshi interrupts the news cycle to pause in grief or delight, to restore power to language. A God at the Door invites the reader on a pilgrimage-one that leads us back to the sacred temple of ourselves. This is an exquisite, generous collection from a poet at the peak of her powers.
Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy Poems about birth, death, and ecosystems of nature and power Winner of the Colorado Book Award in Poetry (2018) In this fourth book in a series of award-winning survival narratives, Dungy writes positioned at a fulcrum, bringing a new life into the world even as her elders are passing on. In a time of massive environmental degradation, violence and abuse of power, a world in which we all must survive, these poems resonate within and beyond the scope of the human realms, delicately balancing between conflicting loci of attention. Dwelling between vibrancy and its opposite, Dungy writes in a single poem about a mother, a daughter, Smokin' Joe Frazier, brittle stars, giant boulders, and a dead blue whale. These poems are written in the face of despair to hold an impossible love and a commitment to hope. A readers companion will be availabe at wesleyan.edu/wespress/readerscompanions.
Antiemetic for Homesickness by Romalyn Ante A brilliant addition to the Chatto poetry list- the first collection from a rising star, Romalyn Ante *Longlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize 2021* *Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2021- A 'tour-de-force'* *An Irish Times and Poetry School Book of the Year 2020* 'A day will come when you won't miss the country na nagluwal sa 'yo.' - 'Antiemetic for Homesickness' The poems in Romalyn Ante's luminous debut build a bridge between two worlds- journeying from the country 'na nagluwal sa 'yo' - that gave birth to you - to a new life in the United Kingdom. Steeped in the richness of Filipino folklore, and studded with Tagalog, these poems speak of the ache of assimilation and the complexities of belonging, telling the stories of generations of migrants who find exile through employment - through the voices of the mothers who leave and the children who are left behind. With dazzling formal dexterity and emotional resonance, this expansive debut offers a unique perspective on family, colonialism, homeland and heritage- from the countries we carry with us, to the places we call home. 'Moving, witty and agile' Observer 'By turns playful and tender, offering a formally-various exploration of migration, community, and nursing... there is honesty, musicality, a powerful heart' Irish Times
One Albuquerque, One Hundred Poets by Mary Oishi (Editor) The City of Albuquerque Poet Laureate from 2020-2022, Mary Oishi, brings together one hundred Albuquerque poets in this anthology that commemorates the Poets in the Libraries series. When COVID-19 struck, Oishi was tasked with promoting and programming poetry during the pandemic. As Albuquerque-and the world-shifted to virtual events, so did the Poets in the Libraries series. Community poets read work virtually at home and at the city's many public libraries. The result is a plethora of poetry, now preserved in video productions on One Albuquerque Media at each of the city's public libraries, and a compilation of one hundred poems and poets from the series in this Poets in the Libraries anthology. Poets included are performance and page poets, previously and first-time published authors. The work explores nature, grief, love, and healing, New Mexico and Albuquerque.

jazz

Jazz Appreciation Month

Looking for jazz music on CD? Try here.

For DVDs involving jazz music, try here.

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

Universal Tonality by Cisco Bradley Since ascending onto the world stage in the 1990s as one of the premier bassists and composers of his generation, William Parker has perpetually toured around the world and released over forty albums as a leader. He is one of the most influential jazz artists alive today. In Universal Tonality historian and critic Cisco Bradley tells the story of Parker's life and music. Drawing on interviews with Parker and his collaborators, Bradley traces Parker's ancestral roots in West Africa via the Carolinas to his childhood in the South Bronx, and illustrates his rise from the 1970s jazz lofts and extended work with pianist Cecil Taylor to the present day. He outlines how Parker's early influences--Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and writers of the Black Arts Movement--grounded Parker's aesthetic and musical practice in a commitment to community and the struggle for justice and freedom. Throughout, Bradley foregrounds Parker's understanding of music, the role of the artist, and the relationship between art, politics, and social transformation. Intimate and capacious, Universal Tonality is the definitive work on Parker's life and music.
The History of Bones by John Lurie The quintessential depiction of 1980s New York and the downtown scene from the artist, actor, musician, and composer John Lurie. In the tornado that was downtown New York in the 1980s, John Lurie stood in its vortex. After founding the band The Lounge Lizards with his brother in 1979, Lurie quickly became a centrifugal figure in the world of outsider artists, cutting-edge filmmakers, and cultural rebels. Now, Lurie vibrantly brings to life the whole wash of 1980s New York as he develops his artistic soul over the course of the decade and comes into orbit with all the prominent artists of that time and place, such as Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Boris Policeband, and especially Jean-Michel Basquiat, the enigmatic artistic prodigy who spent a year sleeping on Lurie's floor on East Third Street. It may feel like Disney World now, but in The History of Bones, the East Village, through Lurie's clear-eyed reminiscence, comes to teeming, gritty life. The book is full of grime and frank humor-Lurie pulls no punches and bars no holds in his descriptions of the frothy whirlpool of the East Village at that time. His story is a journey back to one of the most significant moments in our cultural history, one whose reverberations are still strongly felt today. History may repeat itself, but the way downtown New York happened in the 1980s will never happen again. Luckily, through this beautiful memoir, we all have a front-row seat.
Smoketown by Mark Whitaker "Smoketown brilliantly offers us a chance to see this other black renaissance and spend time with the many luminaries who sparked it...It's thanks to such a gifted storyteller as Whitaker that this forgotten chapter of American history can finally be told in all its vibrancy and glory."--The New York Times Book Review The other great Renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place--Pittsburgh, PA--from the 1920s through the 1950s. Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson's famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely read black newspaper in the country, urging black voters to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party and then rallying black support for World War II. It fielded two of the greatest baseball teams of the Negro Leagues and introduced Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pittsburgh was the childhood home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner; Hall of Fame slugger Josh Gibson--and August Wilson himself. Some of the most glittering figures of the era were changed forever by the time they spent in the city, from Joe Louis and Satchel Paige to Duke Ellington and Lena Horne. Mark Whitaker's Smoketown is a captivating portrait of this unsung community and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal. Whitaker takes readers on a rousing, revelatory journey--and offers a timely reminder that Black History is not all bleak.
Playing Changes by Nate Chinen One of jazz's leading critics gives us an invigorating, richly detailed portrait of the artists and events that have shaped the music of our time. Grounded in authority and brimming with style, Playing Changes is the first book to take the measure of this exhilarating moment: it is a compelling argument for the resiliency of the art form and a rejoinder to any claims about its calcification or demise. "Playing changes," in jazz parlance, has long referred to an improviser's resourceful path through a chord progression. Playing Changes boldly expands on the idea, highlighting a host of significant changes--ideological, technological, theoretical, and practical--that jazz musicians have learned to navigate since the turn of the century. Nate Chinen, who has chronicled this evolution firsthand throughout his journalistic career, vividly sets the backdrop, charting the origins of jazz historicism and the rise of an institutional framework for the music. He traces the influence of commercialized jazz education and reflects on the implications of a globalized jazz ecology. He unpacks the synergies between jazz and postmillennial hip-hop and R&B, illuminating an emergent rhythm signature for the music. And he shows how a new generation of shape-shifting elders, including Wayne Shorter and Henry Threadgill, have moved the aesthetic center of the music. Woven throughout the book is a vibrant cast of characters--from the saxophonists Steve Coleman and Kamasi Washington to the pianists Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer to the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding--who have exerted an important influence on the scene. This is an adaptive new music for a complex new reality, and Playing Changes is the definitive guide.
Queen of Bebop by Elaine M. Hayes Queen of Bebop brilliantly chronicles the life of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of the most influential and innovative musicians of the twentieth century and a pioneer of women's and civil rights Sarah Vaughan, a pivotal figure in the formation of bebop, influenced a broad array of singers who followed in her wake, yet the breadth and depth of her impact--not just as an artist, but also as an African-American woman--remain overlooked.   Drawing from a wealth of sources as well as on exclusive interviews with Vaughan's friends and former colleagues, Queen of Bebop unravels the many myths and misunderstandings that have surrounded Vaughan while offering insights into this notoriously private woman, her creative process, and, ultimately, her genius. Hayes deftly traces the influence that Vaughan's singing had on the perception and appreciation of vocalists--not to mention women--in jazz. She reveals how, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Vaughan helped desegregate American airwaves, opening doors for future African-American artists seeking mainstream success, while also setting the stage for the civil rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. She follows Vaughan from her hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and her first performances at the Apollo, to the Waldorf Astoria and on to the world stage, breathing life into a thrilling time in American music nearly lost to us today. Equal parts biography, criticism, and good old-fashioned American success story, Queen of Bebop is the definitive biography of a hugely influential artist. This absorbing and sensitive treatment of a singular personality updates and corrects the historical record on Vaughan and elevates her status as a jazz great.
Is That All There Is? by James Gavin From the author of the "definitive" (Vanity Fair) biography of Lena Horne, Stormy Weather, comes a brilliantly written portrait of recording artist and musical legend Peggy Lee. "She made you think that she knew who you were, that she was singing only to you..." Miss Peggy Lee cast a spell when she sang. She purred so intimately in nightclubs that couples clasped hands and huddled closer. She hypnotized, even on television. Lee epitomized cool, but her trademark song, "Fever"--covered by Beyoncé and Madonna--is the essence of sizzling sexual heat. Her jazz sense dazzled Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong. She was the voice of swing, the voice of blues, and she provided four of the voices for Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, whose score she co-wrote. But who was the woman behind the Mona Lisa smile? With elegant writing and impeccable research, including interviews with hundreds who knew Lee, acclaimed music journalist James Gavin offers the most revealing look yet at an artist of infinite contradictions and layers. Lee was a North Dakota prairie girl who became a temptress of enduring mystique. She was a singer-songwriter before the term existed. Lee "had incredible confidence onstage," observed the Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop; yet inner turmoil wracked her. She spun a romantic nirvana in her songs, but couldn't sustain one in reality. As she passed middle age, Lee dwelled increasingly in a bizarre dreamland. She died in 2002 at the age of eighty-one, but Lee's fascination has only grown since. This masterful account of Peggy Lee's strange and enchanting life is a long overdue portrait of an artist who redefined popular singing.
Sophisticated Giant by Maxine Gordon; Farah Jasmine Griffin (Foreword by); Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III (Afterword by) Sophisticated Giant presents the life and legacy of tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon (1923-1990), one of the major innovators of modern jazz. In a context of biography, history, and memoir, Maxine Gordon has completed the book that her late husband began, weaving his "solo" turns with her voice and a chorus of voices from past and present. Reading like a jazz composition, the blend of research, anecdote, and a selection of Dexter's personal letters reflects his colorful life and legendary times. It is clear why the celebrated trumpet genius Dizzy Gillespie said to Dexter, "Man, you ought to leave your karma to science."   Dexter Gordon the icon is the Dexter beloved and celebrated on albums, on film, and in jazz lore--even in a street named for him in Copenhagen. But this image of the cool jazzman fails to come to terms with the multidimensional man full of humor and wisdom, a figure who struggled to reconcile being both a creative outsider who broke the rules and a comforting insider who was a son, father, husband, and world citizen. This essential book is an attempt to fill in the gaps created by our misperceptions as well as the gaps left by Dexter himself. 
Good Things Happen Slowly by Fred Hersch Jazz could not contain Fred Hersch. His meteoric rise as a talented session pianist--one who played with the giants of the 20th century in the autumn of their careers, including Art Farmer, Joe Henderson, and more-- blossomed further in the nineties and beyond into a compositional genius that defied the boundaries of bop, sweeping in elements of pop, classical, and folk to create a wholly new music. Good Things Happen Slowly is a memoir, but it is also more than that. It's the story of the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz player, and a deep look into the cloistered, largely African-American jazz culture that made such a status both transgressive and groundbreaking. It is a remarkable, at times lyrical evocation of New York in the twilight days of post-Stonewall hedonism, and a powerfully brave narrative of the illness that led to Hersch's two-month-long medically induced coma in 2007, from which he would emerge to create some of the finest, most direct and emotionally compelling music of his career.
How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively, accessible introduction to the art of listening to jazz. Covering everything from the music's structure and history to the basic building blocks of improvisation, Gioia shows exactly what to listen for in a jazz performance. How does a casual listener learn to understand and appreciate the nuances between the unapologetic and innovative sounds of Louis Armstrong, the complexity of Coleman Hawkin's saxophone, and the exotic and alluring compositions of Duke Ellington? How does Thelonius Monk fit in alongside Benny Goodman and John Coltrane? He shares listening strategies that will help readers understand and appreciate the great American art form for the rest of their lives, and provides a history of the major movements in jazz right up to the present day. He concludes with a guide to 150 elite musicians who are setting the tone for 21st century jazz. Both an appreciation and an introduction to jazz by a foremost expert, How to Listen to Jazz is a must-read for anyone who's ever wanted to understand America's greatest contribution to the world of music.
Better Git It in Your Soul by Krin Gabbard Charles Mingus is one of the most important--and most mythologized--composers and performers in jazz history. Classically trained and of mixed race, he was an outspoken innovator as well as a bandleader, composer, producer, and record-label owner. His vivid autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, has done much to shape the image of Mingus as something of a wild man: idiosyncratic musical genius with a penchant for skirt-chasing and violent outbursts. But, as the autobiography reveals, he was also a hopeless romantic. After exploring the most important events in Mingus's life, Krin Gabbard takes a careful look at Mingus as a writer as well as a composer and musician. He digs into how and why Mingus chose to do so much self-analysis, how he worked to craft his racial identity in a world that saw him simply as "black," and how his mental and physical health problems shaped his career. Gabbard sets aside the myth-making and convincingly argues that Charles Mingus created a unique language of emotions--and not just in music. Capturing many essential moments in jazz history anew, Better Git It in Your Soul will fascinate anyone who cares about jazz, African American history, and the artist's life.
Conversations in Jazz by Ralph J. Gleason; Toby Gleason; Ted Gioia An extraordinary collection of revealing, personal interviews with fourteen jazz music legends During his nearly forty years as a music journalist, Ralph J. Gleason recorded many in-depth interviews with some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. These informal sessions, conducted mostly in Gleason's Berkeley, California, home, have never been transcribed and published in full until now.   This remarkable volume, a must-read for any jazz fan, serious musician, or musicologist, reveals fascinating, little-known details about these gifted artists, their lives, their personas, and, of course, their music. Bill Evans discusses his battle with severe depression, while John Coltrane talks about McCoy Tyner's integral role in shaping the sound of the Coltrane quartet, praising the pianist enthusiastically. Included also are interviews with Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Quincy Jones, Jon Hendricks, and the immortal Duke Ellington, plus seven more of the most notable names in twentieth-century jazz.]]>
Strayhorn by A. Alyce Claerbaut (Editor); David Schlesinger (Editor); Ramsey Lewis (Foreword by) "This lush paean to the composer explores the challenges he faced of being both black and gay, and his commitment to his own four freedoms." --The New York Times Strayhorn: An Illustrated Life is a stunning collection of essays, photographs, and ephemera celebrating Billy Strayhorn, one of the most significant yet under-appreciated contributors to 20th century American music. Released in commemoration of Strayhorn's centennial, this luxurious coffee-table book offers intimate details of the composer's life from musicians, scholars, and Strayhorn's closest relatives. Perhaps best known for his 28-year collaborative role as Duke Ellington's "writing and arranging companion," Strayhorn has emerged in recent years as an even more meritorious force in shaping the jazz canon.Strayhorn begins by describing Billy's abusive upbringing and early success, and goes on to cover his music, family, intellectual pursuits, involvement with civil rights, and open homosexuality. Strayhorn features contributions from Strayhorn's biographer David Hajdu, film director Rob Levi, music scholar Walter van de Leur, as well as commentary from jazz greats like Lena Horne, Clark Terry, Dianne Reeves, Nancy Wilson, Terell Stafford, Herb Jeffries, and more. With lush photography and rare memorabilia like handwritten scores, this is a book to be treasured by jazz aficionados and music lovers everywhere. Enthralling and visually captivating,Strayhorn: An Illustrated Life lauds a beloved jazz legend and captures a prodigious legacy that will influence generations to come.
Empire of Sin by Gary Krist From bestselling author Gary Krist, a vibrant and immersive account of New Orleans' other civil war, at a time when commercialized vice, jazz culture, and endemic crime defined the battlegrounds of the Crescent City Empire of Sin re-creates the remarkable story of New Orleans' thirty-years war against itself, pitting the city's elite "better half" against its powerful and long-entrenched underworld of vice, perversity, and crime. This early-20th-century battle centers on one man: Tom Anderson, the undisputed czar of the city's Storyville vice district, who fights desperately to keep his empire intact as it faces onslaughts from all sides. Surrounding him are the stories of flamboyant prostitutes, crusading moral reformers, dissolute jazzmen, ruthless Mafiosi, venal politicians, and one extremely violent serial killer, all battling for primacy in a wild and wicked city unlike any other in the world.
Kansas City Lightning by Stanley Crouch Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker is the first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from Stanley Crouch, one of the foremost authorities on jazz and culture in America. Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four. Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning recreates Parker’s Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Crouch reveals an ambitious young man torn between music and drugs, between his domineering mother and his impressionable young wife, whose teenage romance with Charlie lies at the bittersweet heart of this story. With the wisdom of a jazz scholar, the cultural insights of an acclaimed social critic, and the narrative skill of a literary novelist, Stanley Crouch illuminates this American master as never before.
Keystone Korner by Kathy Sloane; Sascha Feinstein (Editor); Al Young (Preface by) During the 1970s, when jazz clubs all over America were folding under the onslaught of rock and roll and disco, San Francisco's Keystone Korner was an oasis for jazz musicians and patrons. Tucked next to a police station in the city's North Beach area, the Keystone became known as one of the most important jazz spots in the United States. It was so beloved by musicians that superstars McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, and Elvin Jones played a benefit concert just so the club could buy a liquor license. In this book, more than 100 black and white photographs, a collage of oral histories, and a marvelous CD of recordings from the club chronicle the Keystone experience.
Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra by Steven Feld In this remarkable book, Steven Feld, pioneer of the anthropology of sound, listens to the vernacular cosmopolitanism of jazz players in Ghana. Some have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended the innovations of John Coltrane with local instruments and worldviews. Combining memoir, biography, ethnography, and history, Feld conveys a diasporic intimacy and dialogue that contests American nationalist and Afrocentric narratives of jazz history. His stories of Accra's jazz cosmopolitanism feature Ghanaba/Guy Warren (1923-2008), the eccentric drummer who befriended the likes of Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Thelonious Monk in the United States in the 1950s, only to return, embittered, to Ghana, where he became the country's leading experimentalist. Others whose stories figure prominently are Nii Noi Nortey, who fuses the legacies of the black avant-gardes of the 1960s and 1970s with pan-African philosophy in sculptural shrines to Coltrane and musical improvisations inspired by his work; the percussionist Nii Otoo Annan, a traditional master inspired by Coltrane's drummers Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali; and a union of Accra truck and minibus drivers whose squeeze-bulb honk-horn music for drivers' funerals recalls the jazz funerals of New Orleans. Feld describes these artists' cosmopolitan outlook as an "acoustemology," a way of knowing the world through sound.
Shall We Play That One Together? by Paul De Barros In a world dominated by men, Marian McPartland distinguished herself as one of the greatest jazz pianists of her age Born in the UK as Margaret Marian Turner, Marian McPartland learned to play classical piano, but was passionately attracted to the rhythms of American jazz. Entertaining troops in WWII Europe, she met her future husband, Jimmy McPartland, a cocky young trumpet player who was the protege of the great Bix Beiderbecke. They were married and, together, they made jazz history. At first, Marian played second fiddle to Jimmy in Chicago, but when they moved to New York, Marian and her trio took up residence at the famous Hickory House where she thrilled the crowds from her perch on a stage in the middle of large oval bar. From there she went on to triumphs at places like the Montreaux Jazz Festival. Possibly, her greatest accomplishment was the creation of NPR's long-running showPiano Jazz. More than the life story of one of our greatest artists,Shall We Play That One Together? by Paul de Barros chronicles an age when jazz was a vital art form. Just as inviting as Marian's signature question onPiano Jazz,Shall We Play That One Together? is an invitation to readers everywhere to listen to the score of a bygone age.
Jazz/not Jazz by David Ake (Editor); Charles Hiroshi Garrett (Editor); Daniel Ira Goldmark (Editor) What is jazz? What is gained?and what is lost?when various communities close ranks around a particular definition of this quintessentially American music? Jazz/Not Jazz explores some of the musicians, concepts, places, and practices which, while deeply connected to established jazz institutions and aesthetics, have rarely appeared in traditional histories of the form. David Ake, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and Daniel Goldmark have assembled a stellar group of writers to look beyond the canon of acknowledged jazz greats and address some of the big questions facing jazz today. More than just a history of jazz and its performers, this collections seeks out those people and pieces missing from the established narratives to explore what they can tell us about the way jazz has been defined and its history has been told.
Jazz by Scott DeVeaux; Gary Giddins In this vivid history of jazz, a respected critic and a leading scholar capture the excitement of America's unique music with intellectual bite, unprecedented insight, and the passion of unabashed fans. They explain what jazz is, where it came from, and who created it and why, all within the broader context of American life and culture. Emphasizing its African American roots, Jazz traces the history of the music over the last hundred years. From ragtime and blues to the international craze for swing, from the heated protests of the avant-garde to the radical diversity of today's artists, Jazz describes the travails and triumphs of musical innovators struggling for work, respect, and cultural acceptance set against the backdrop of American history, commerce, and politics. With vibrant photographs by legendary jazz chronicler Herman Leonard, Jazz is also an arresting visual history of a century of music.
Clawing at the Limits of Cool by Salim Washington; Farah Jasmine Griffin When the renowned trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis chose the members of his quintet in 1955, he passed over well-known, respected saxophonists such as Sonny Rollins to pick out the young, still untested John Coltrane. What might have seemed like a minor decision at the time would instead set the course not just for each of their careers but for jazz itself. "Clawing at the Limits of Cool "is the first book to focus on Davis and Coltrane's musical interaction and its historical context, on the ways they influenced each other and the tremendous impact they've had on culture since then. It chronicles the drama of their collaboration, from their initial historic partnership to the interlude of their breakup, during which each man made tremendous progress toward his personal artistic goals. And it continues with the last leg of their journey together, a time when the Miles Davis group, featuring John Coltrane, forever changed the landscape of jazz. Authors Farah Jasmine Griffin and Salim Washington examine the profound implications that the Davis/Coltrane collaboration would have for jazz and African American culture, drawing parallels to the changing standards of African American identity with their public personas and private difficulties. With vastly different personal and musical styles, the two men could not have been more different. One exemplified the tough, closemouthed cool of the fifties while the other made the transition during this time from unfocused junkie to a religious pilgrim who would inspire others to pursue spiritual enlightenment in the coming decade. Their years together mark a watershed moment, and "Clawing at the Limits of Cool" draws on both cultural history and precise musical detail to illuminate the importance that their collaboration would have for jazz and American history as a whole.
A New History of Jazz by Alyn Shipton Alyn Shipton provides a comprehensive and entertaining account of jazz history, while challenging many of the assumptions and mythologies that have surrounded jazz since its birth.
Coltrane by Ben Ratliff A major work about the great saxophonist-and about the state of jazz. What was the essence of John Coltrane's achievement that makes him so prized forty years after his death? What was it about his improvising, his bands, his compositions, his place within his era of jazz that left so many musicians and listeners so powerfully drawn to him? What would a John Coltrane look like now-or are we looking for the wrong signs? The acclaimed jazz writer Ben Ratliff addresses these questions in Coltrane. First Ratliff tells the story of Coltrane's development, from his first recordings as a no-name navy bandsman to his last recordings as a near-saint, paying special attention to the last ten years of his life, which contained a remarkable series of breakthroughs in a nearly religious search for deeper expression.In the book's second half, Ratliff traces another history: that of Coltrane's influence and legacy. This story begins in the mid-'50s and considers the reactions of musicians, critics, and others who paid attention, asking: Why does Coltrane signify so heavily in the basic identity of jazz?Placing jazz among other art forms and American social history, and placing Coltrane not just among jazz musicians but among the greatest American artists, Ratliff tries to look for the sources of power in Coltrane's music-not just in matters of technique, composition, and musical concepts, but in the deeper frequencies of Coltrane's sound.
Django Reinhardt and the Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz by Michael Dregni; Alain Antonietto Django Reinhardt was perhaps the greatest guitarist to ever live. A Gypsy who made his jazz guitar speak with a human voice, he was dashing, charismatic, childish . . . and doomed to die young after creating a legacy of Gypsy Jazz that remains vibrant today. Gypsy Jazz is a music both joyous and sad, timeless and modern. It was born from a marriage of Louis Armstrongs trumpet with the anguished sound of Romany violin and the fire of flamenco guitar. Created amidst the glamour of Jazz Age Paris and reaching a peak during the horrors of World War II, Gypsy Jazz gave a voice to a dispossessed people. Today, Gypsy Jazz is more popular than ever. It has a legacy as strong as the Cuban sounds of the Buena Vista Social Club, the blues of B. B. King, or the R&B of Ray Charles. Django Reinhardt and the Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz is a stylish collection of more than two hundred illustrations telling Djangos story and the history of Gypsy jazz. Running through the Paris Jazz Age of the 1920s to the current worldwide renaissance of Gypsy jazz bands (including Djangos grandsons, who are playing today), the images include rare archival photographs, modern images, posters, programs, tickets, guitars, memorabilia, paintings, and more.

bat

International Bat Appreciation Day

April 17

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

Bat House Builder's Handbook by Merlin D. Tuttle; Donna L. Hensley The definitive source for bat house information. Based on research conducted by BCI, it contains the results from the first-of-its-kind study on bat house occupancy. Includes plans, mounting suggestions, tips for experimentation, research findings, frequently asked bat house questions, and information about bats most likely to use bat houses.
Bats by Tony Hutson With nearly 1,000 species worldwide, bats constitute one of the largest groups of mammals. They are also the world's only truly flying mammals and can form colossal aggregations. Yet despite their vast numbers and a wide distribution between the Arctic Circle and the tip of South America, we have only recently begun to understand much about their lives and their remarkable mastery of the night skies. This intriguing study contains a fascinating collection of photographs gathered from around the world. Its text conveys all the latest research about the lifecycles, conservation, and extraordinary qualities of these too often misunderstood creatures.
Bats by M. Brock Fenton; Nancy B. Simmons There are more than 1,300 species of bats--or almost a quarter of the world's mammal species. But before you shrink in fear from these furry "creatures of the night," consider the bat's fundamental role in our ecosystem. A single brown bat can eat several thousand insects in a night. Bats also pollinate and disperse the seeds for many of the plants we love, from bananas to mangoes and figs.             Bats: A World of Science and Mystery presents these fascinating nocturnal creatures in a new light. Lush, full-color photographs portray bats in flight, feeding, and mating in views that show them in exceptional detail. The photos also take the reader into the roosts of bats, from caves and mines to the tents some bats build out of leaves. A comprehensive guide to what scientists know about the world of bats, the book begins with a look at bats' origins and evolution. The book goes on to address a host of questions related to flight, diet, habitat, reproduction, and social structure: Why do some bats live alone and others in large colonies? When do bats reproduce and care for their young? How has the ability to fly--unique among mammals--influenced bats' mating behavior? A chapter on biosonar, or echolocation, takes readers through the system of high-pitched calls bats emit to navigate and catch prey. More than half of the world's bat species are either in decline or already considered endangered, and the book concludes with suggestions for what we can do to protect these species for future generations to benefit from and enjoy. From the tiny "bumblebee bat"--the world's smallest mammal--to the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox, whose wingspan exceeds five feet, A Battery of Bats presents a panoramic view of one of the world's most fascinating yet least-understood species.
Bats of the World by Gary L. Graham; Fiona A. Reid (Illustrator) Bats are some of the most intriguing-and ecologically important-animals on earth. In this handsomely illustrated guide, you will learn about: - The natural history and evolution of bats - Important identifying features - Habitats, migration patterns, and common mating practices - The status of various endangered bat species Perfect for both experienced and novice bat watchers, Bats of the World is an invaluable resource for understanding the significance of bats in our world.
Bats of the Rocky Mountain West by Rick A. Adams; Wendy Smith (Illustrator) The book begins with a general discussion of bat biology and evolution as well as regional physiography and zoogeography. In addition, Adams describes -- based on the results of extensive research -- the behaviour and ecology of the 31 species of bats found in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Naturalists and biologists alike will benefit from the detailed species descriptions, colour photographs and illustrations, distribution maps, and echolocation sonograms. A unique and valuable reference for professional bat biologists, naturalists, and wildlife enthusiasts interested in the conservation and ecology of bats in the region.
The Secret Lives of Bats by Merlin Tuttle A lifetime of adventures with bats around the world reveals why these special and imperiled creatures should be protected rather than feared. From menacing moonshiners and armed bandits to charging elephants and man-eating tigers, Merlin Tuttle has stopped at nothing to find and protect bats on every continent they inhabit. Enamored of bats ever since discovering a colony in a cave as a boy, Tuttle saw how effective photography could be in persuading people not to fear bats, and he has spent his career traveling the world to document them. Few people realize how sophisticated and intelligent bats are. Tuttle shares research showing that frog-eating bats can identify frogs by their calls, that vampire bats have a social order similar to that of primates, and that bats have remarkable memories. Bats also provide enormous benefits by eating crop pests, pollinating plants, and carrying seeds needed for reforestation. They save farmers billions of dollars annually and are essential to a healthy planet. Sharing highlights from a lifetime of adventure and discovery, Tuttle takes us to the frontiers of bat research and conservation and forever changes the way we see these poorly understood yet fascinating creatures.
Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind by Warner Shedd Did you know that "flying" squirrels are incapable of true flight? Were you aware that opossums don't "play dead," as in the common folk saying "playing possum"? In this fascinating and gorgeously illustrated new book, wildlife expert and enthusiast Warner Shedd, former executive for the National Wildlife Federation, uncovers the scientific realities obscured by our numerous long-held misconceptions of wild animals. Setting the most tenacious of these age-old superstitions against evidence that he and other biologists and naturalists have gleaned from careful observation and investigation, Shedd refutes such popular myths as beavers can fell trees in a desired direction, gray squirrels remember where they bury nuts, wolves howl at the moon, and cougars are an endangered species. In addition to dispelling misinformation, Owls Aren't Wise & Bats Aren't Blind presents some fascinating facts about the animals that many of us encounter in our own backyards or walking across the road as we drive in our cars. For instance, did you know that a porcupine is actually a large rodent, and that its protective quills are really specialized hairs numbering about 30,000 per animal? That means that a typical porcupine has about 140 quills per square inch! Shedd also uses humorous anecdotes to show us how funny (and educational) it can be when animals themselves defy our mistaken beliefs about them. Casting new light on the old tenet that ravens can be taught to mimic the human voice, Warner Shedd tells of a scientist who spent six years teaching a raven to cry "nevermore," after the haunting raven in the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem. Shedd further explains that recent research indicates that ravens only mimic if they have the desire to do so. Owls Aren't Wise & Bats Aren't Blind covers more than thirty North American species--some as familiar as the common toad, others as elusive as the lynx. And Shedd captivates the reader as only an experienced naturalist could, with detailed, accurate information on such varied wildlife as muskrats, herons, brown bears, crows, armadillos, and coyotes--to name only a few. Owls Aren't Wise & Bats Aren't Blind grew out of Warner Shedd's desire to share biologically sound information and counter erroneous folklore about wild animals. By arming his readers with knowledge, Shedd hopes to promote a more informed and respectful view of many North American wildlife species and ultimately encourage the scientific management and conservation of all our native wildlife.
The Sun and the Moon by Matthew Goodman The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful, entertaining, and surprisingly true story of how in the summer of 1835 a series of articles in the Sun , the first of the city’s "penny papers,” convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited. Six articles, purporting to reveal the lunar discoveries made by a world-famous British astronomer, described the life found on the moon--including unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and, strangest of all, four-foot-tall flying man-bats. The series quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era. And the Sun , a brash working-class upstart less than two years old, had become the most widely read newspaper in the world. Told in richly novelistic detail, The Sun and the Moon brings the raucous world of 1830s New York City vividly to life--the noise, the excitement, the sense that almost anything was possible. The book overflows with larger-than-life characters, including Richard Adams Locke, author of the moon series (who never intended it to be a hoax at all); a fledgling showman named P.T. Barnum, who had just brought his own hoax to New York; and the young writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was convinced that the moon series was a plagiarism of his own work. An exhilarating narrative history of a city on the cusp of greatness and a nation newly united by affordable newspapers, The Sun and the Moon may just be the strangest true story you’ve ever read.
The Pollinator Victory Garden: How to Attract and Support Bees, Beetles, Butterflies, Bats, and Other Pollinators by Kim Eierman You can create a beautiful landscape that attracts and supports many different species of pollinators.
Wildlife Watching in America's National Parks by Gary W. Vequist; Daniel S. Licht From the Great Smoky Mountains to Point Reyes National Seashore, America's national parks are home to some of nature's great wildlife spectacles. Here, Gary W. Vequist and Daniel S. Licht, two veterans of the National Park Service, focus on twelve animals that have been imperiled and at risk, but are now protected within the National Park System. Showcasing one species for each month of the year, including gray wolf, black bear, prairie dog, sea turtle, bison, bats, salmon, elk, beaver, American alligator, gray whale, and bald eagle, Vequist and Licht pair each premier species with a featured park, adding information about other parks where the species may also be readily seen and identifying other animals to look for in the same habitat--animals that prey, are preyed upon, or exist side by side with the focal species. Beyond being a guide to observing these remarkable animals, Wildlife Watching in America's National Parks, as the title implies, is also a book about America's national parks. Reminding Americans why national parks are truly our "best idea" and encouraging readers to go find out why, these career wildlife specialists stress that it is "impossible to fathom America without these animals and without the parks in which they reside." Nature lovers, travelers, and outdoor hobbyists of all types will be enthralled by this inside view of America's wildlife and the breathtaking photographs of places they inhabit. List of Wildlife and Parks Featured: Yellowstone National Park: Gray Wolf Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Black Bear Badlands National Park: Prairie Dog Dry Tortugas National Park: Sea Turtle Theodore Roosevelt National Park: Plains Bison Carlsbad Caverns National Park: Bats Olympic National Park: Pacific Salmon Buffalo National River: Rocky Mountain Elk Cuyahoga Valley National Park: Beaver Everglades National Park: American Alligator Point Reyes National Seashore: Gray Whale
New Mexico Book of the Undead: by Ray John de Aragon New Mexico is a land of shadow and mystery. From the old coal mines near Raton and the isolation of Isleta Pueblo to the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and beyond, ghouls and spirits lie in wait. Witches transform into vampire bats, werewolves howl and the undead rise with the light of the moon. La Llorona walks the banks of rivers and roads, her legendary and mournful cries terrifying any who cross her path. They are stories passed down by the fearless Comancheros, devoted Franciscan monks, fierce ciboleros and others to the present day as warnings of the evil in the world. In a captivating exploration of New Mexico's most fearful tales, Ray John de Aragon recounts stories from the state's rich and spine-chilling cultural folklore.
Nocturne by Traer Scott Whether fierce, cuddly, startling, mysterious, or some indefinable combination of all of the above, nocturnal animals never fail to fascinate. In Nocturne: Creatures of the Night, celebrated animal photographer Traer Scott takes the viewer on a journey through nighttime in the animal kingdom, revealing some of nature's most elusive creatures. Bats, big cats, flying squirrels, tarantula, owls, kangaroo mice, giant moths, sloth, several species of snakes, and a Madagascar hissing cockroach are only a few of the animals illuminated in these lushly detailed portraits. Seventy-five full-color photographs of forty different species are accompanied by informed but accessible descriptions of each animal's habits and habitats, and an introduction provides personal insight into how Scott captures her astonishing images. Nocturne is a compelling view of the rarely seen darkness dwellers who populate the night.
Wildlife Heroes by Julie Scardina; Jeff Flocken With one-third of known species being threatened with extinction, wildlife conservationists are some of the most important heroes on the planet, and Wildlife Heroes profiles the work of 40 of the leading conservationists and the animals and causes they are committed to saving, such as Belinda Low (zebras), Iain Douglas-Hamilton (elephants), Karen Eckert (sea turtles), S.T. Wong (sun bear), Steve Galster (wildlife trade), and Wangari Maathai (habitat loss). Since we all should have an interest in conservation, there is a chapter providing information on ways people can get involved and make a difference. Chapter introductions are by author Kuki Gallmann, actor Ted Danson, actress Stefanie Powers, Congressman Jay Inslee, and TV personality Jack Hanna.
The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklöf; Elizabeth DeNoma (Translator) Named a Best Book of 2023 by Scientific American This timely and captivating look at the hidden impact of light pollution is "rich in revelation and insight...lyrical" (The Wall Street Journal) and urges us to cherish natural darkness for the sake of the environment, our own well-being, and all life on earth. How much light is too much light? Satellite pictures show our planet as a brightly glowing orb, and in our era of constant illumination, light pollution has become a major issue. The world's flora and fauna have evolved to operate in the natural cycle of day and night. But in the last 150 years, we have extended our day--and in doing so have forced out the inhabitants of the night and disrupted the circadian rhythms necessary to sustain all living things, including ourselves. In this "well-researched and surprisingly lyrical" (The New Statesman, UK) book, Swedish conservationist Johan Eklöf urges us to appreciate natural darkness, its creatures, and its unique benefits. He ponders the beauties of the night sky, traces the errant paths of light-drunk moths and the swift dives of keen-eyed owls, and shows us the bioluminescent creatures of the deepest oceans. As a devoted friend of the night, Eklöf reveals the startling domino effect of diminishing darkness: insects, dumbfounded by streetlamps, failing to reproduce; birds blinded and bewildered by artificial lights; and bats starving as they wait in vain for insects that only come out in the dark. For humans, light-induced sleep disturbances impact our hormones and weight, and can contribute to mental health problems like chronic stress and depression. The streetlamps, floodlights, and neon signs of cities are altering entire ecosystems, and scientists are only just beginning to understand their long-term effects. The light bulb--long the symbol of progress and development--needs to be turned off. "Urgent...vivid...eye-opening" (Publishers Weekly), and ultimately encouraging, The Darkness Manifesto outlines simple steps that we can take to benefit ourselves and the planet. In order to ensure a bright future, we must embrace the darkness.
Nature Anatomy by Julia Rothman See the world in a whole new way! Acclaimed illustrator Julia Rothman combines art and science in this exciting and educational guide to the structure, function, and personality of the natural world. Explore the anatomy of a jellyfish, the inside of a volcano, monarch butterfly migration, how sunsets work, and much more. Rothman's whimsical illustrations are paired with interactive activities that encourage curiosity and inspire you to look more closely at the world all around you. Nature Anatomy is the second book in Rothman's Anatomy series - you'll love Nature Anatomy Notebook, Ocean Anatomy, Food Anatomy, and Farm Anatomy, too!
Call Number: eBook
House Guests, House Pests by Richard Jones Today we live in snug, well-furnished houses surrounded by the trappings of a civilised life. But we are not alone - we suffer a constant stream of unwanted visitors. Our houses, our food, our belongings, our very existence are under constant attack from a host of invaders eager to take advantage of our shelter, our food stores and our tasty soft furnishings.From bats in the belfry to beetles in the cellar, moths in the wardrobe and mosquitoes in the bedroom, humans cannot escape the attentions of the animal kingdom. Nature may be red in tooth and claw, but when it's our blood the bedbugs are after, when it's our cereal bowl that's littered with mouse droppings, and when it's our favourite chair that collapses due to woodworm in the legs, it really brings it home the fact that we and our homes are part of nature too.This book represents a 21st century version of the classic Mediaeval bestiary. It poses questions such as where these animals came from, can we live with them, can we get rid of them, and should we? Written in Richard Jones's engaging style and with a funky-retro design, House Guests, House Pests will be a book to treasure.
Vampiro by David E. Brown Zoologist David Brown has sifted through the mythology of the vampyre to present a picture of the vampire bat in true-life form. For both bat-specialists and non-biologists alike.
Bat Biology and Conservation by Thomas H. Kunz (Editor); Paul A. Racey (Editor) Accounting for nearly a quarter of living mammal species, bats are the focus of large-scale research efforts in almost every field of biology and have become increasingly recognized for their importance to discussions of vertebrate biodiversity and conservation. The past three decades have seen enormous strides in the field of chiropteran biology, largely due to advances in technology, observational techniques, and analytical methods. Presenting the most recent research and synthetic reviews of more than thirty-five of the world's leading authorities on bats, Bat Biology and Conservation discusses bat phylogeny and evolution, functional morphology, echolocation, and conservation biology. Several contributors focus on long-standing problems in bat systematics and illustrate the value of well-substantiated phylogenetic hypotheses for understanding diverse biological patterns. Others emphasize the importance of investigating both form and function and consider how morphological and ecological constraints influence flight, mastication, and the sensory systems used in echolocation. Still others consider the conservation status of bats in every part of the world and discuss the protection of both roosting and foraging habitats. As the loss of natural habitats and their species continues unabated, this book documents efforts to investigate bats in both tropical and temperate ecosystems. It is an essential reference not only for bat scientists but also for conservation biologists and those working with other mammalian groups.

columnist

National Columnists' Day

April 18

While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!

Ernie's America: The Best of Ernie Pyle's 1930's Travel Dispatches by David Nichols (editor) A companion volume to the highly popular Ernie's War, here is a delightful collection of newspaper columns written during the famed journalist's travels through America from 1935 to 1942.
The Right Call by Sally Jenkins An NPR best book of the year * New York Times bestseller The Washington Post sportswriter and New York Times bestselling author of the "fascinating" (The Wall Street Journal) The Real All Americans presents a love letter to the extraordinary coaches and athletes she has covered over the years and the actionable principles of excellence they embody. Sportswriter Sally Jenkins has spent her entire adult life observing and writing about great coaches and athletes. With her engaging and expert prose, she has helped shape the way we view these talented sports icons. But somewhere along the line, she realized, they had begun to shape her. Now, she presents the astonishing inner qualities in these same people that pushed them to overcome pressure, elevate their performances, and discover champion identities. Based on years of observing, interviewing, and analyzing elite coaches and playmakers, such as Bill Belichick, Peyton Manning, Michael Phelps, and more, Jenkins reveals the seven principles behind success: -Conditioning -Practice -Discipline -Candor -Culture -Resilience -Intention Discover how you can apply these same principles to your life and become your own champion. Colorful, inspirational, and accessible, The Right Call is the one stop shop for anyone wanting to learn how to effectively elevate themselves to greatness.
Opinions by Roxane Gay From beloved and bestselling author Roxane Gay, "a strikingly fresh cultural critic" (Washington Post) comes an exhilarating collection of her essays on culture, politics, and everything in between. Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society--state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women's rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of empathy--alongside more individually personalized matters: can I tell my co-worker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily 8 am meeting? In her role as a New York Times opinion section contributor and the publication's "Work Friend" columnist, she reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights. Opinions is a collection of Roxane Gay's best nonfiction pieces from the past ten years. Covering a wide range of topics--politics, feminism, the culture wars, civil rights, and much more--with an all-new introduction in which she reflects on the past decade in America, this sharp, thought-provoking anthology will delight Roxane Gay's devotees and draw new readers to this inimitable talent.
I Wouldn't Do That If I Were Me by Jason Gay The Wall Street Journal columnist and bestselling author of Little Victories takes a humorous and insightful look at life in the face of overwhelming societal change that we never anticipated--from the effects on parenthood, marriage, friendship, work, and play to all other aspects of the strange lives we find ourselves living. Like many of us, Jason Gay didn't see this coming: a reshaped world, on edge, often stuck at home, questioning everything, trying to navigate a digital landscape that changes how we think, parent, coach, and live. With a series of topical and interconnected personal pieces, Gay comically takes on this new state of being, looking for the optimism and joy in the face of discouragement. He embarks on a rowdy ride with his son to the Daytona 500, weeks before lockdown. He confides his hilariously banal texts with his wife. He allows his mom to kidnap the family cat. From the modest thrills of Little League parenting to reckoning with the impending death of a close friend, Gay's essays run the gamut of modern life and he approaches it all with humility, grace, and more than a few laughs.
From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The roadmap for finding purpose, meaning, and success as we age, from bestselling author, Harvard professor, and the Atlantic's happiness columnist Arthur Brooks. Many of us assume that the more successful we are, the less susceptible we become to the sense of professional and social irrelevance that often accompanies aging. But the truth is, the greater our achievements and our attachment to them, the more we notice our decline, and the more painful it is when it occurs. What can we do, starting now, to make our older years a time of happiness, purpose, and yes, success? At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. From Strength to Strength is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life. Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness. Read this book and you, too, can go from strength to strength.
The Beauty of Dusk by Frank Bruni From New York Times columnist and bestselling author Frank Bruni comes a wise and moving memoir about aging, affliction, and optimism after partially losing his eyesight. One morning in late 2017, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni woke up with strangely blurred vision. He wondered at first if some goo or gunk had worked its way into his right eye. But this was no fleeting annoyance, no fixable inconvenience. Overnight, a rare stroke had cut off blood to one of his optic nerves, rendering him functionally blind in that eye--forever. And he soon learned from doctors that the same disorder could ravage his left eye, too. He could lose his sight altogether. In The Beauty of Dusk, Bruni hauntingly recounts his adjustment to this daunting reality, a medical and spiritual odyssey that involved not only reappraising his own priorities but also reaching out to, and gathering wisdom from, longtime friends and new acquaintances who had navigated their own traumas and afflictions. The result is a poignant, probing, and ultimately uplifting examination of the limits that all of us inevitably encounter, the lenses through which we choose to evaluate them and the tools we have for perseverance. Bruni's world blurred in one sense, as he experienced his first real inklings that the day isn't forever and that light inexorably fades, but sharpened in another. Confronting unexpected hardship, he felt more blessed than ever before. There was vision lost. There was also vision found.
Every Goddamn Day by Neil Steinberg A daily celebration of Chicago's history, both known and obscure, and always entertaining.   Every day in Chicago is a day to remember. In a city so rich with history, every day is the anniversary of some storied historical or cultural moment, whether it's the dedication of the Pablo Picasso sculpture downtown on August 15, or the arrest of Rod Blagojevich at his Ravenswood home on December 9, or a fire that possibly involved a cow on October 8.   In Every Goddamn Day, acerbic Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg takes the story of the city, pares away the dull, eat-your-peas parts, and provides 366 captivating daily readings in what makes Chicago Chicago and America America. It calls upon a wide cast of characters, from Oscar Wilde to Muhammad Ali, from Emma Goldman to Teddy Roosevelt, and from Richard M. Daley to Fred Hampton, to create a compelling narrative that can be read at a sitting or in a yearlong series of daily doses.   From New Year's Day to New Years' Eve, Steinberg takes us on a vivid and entertaining tour, illuminating the famous, obscure, tragic, and hilarious elements that make each day in Chicago memorable.  
Bad Sex by Nona Willis Aronowitz Named a Most Anticipated Book by Bustle, Esquire, Nylon, and The Millions "Intimate, thoughtful, and accessible to anyone struggling with the persistent, maddening inequities of contemporary sex." -Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad From Teen Vogue sex and love columnist Nona Willis Aronowitz, a blend of memoir, social history, and cultural criticism that probes the meaning of desire and sexual freedom today. At thirty-two years old, everything in Nona Willis Aronowitz's life, and in America, was in disarray. Her marriage was falling apart. Her nuclear family was slipping away. Her heart and libido were both in overdrive. Embroiled in an era of fear, reckoning, and reimagining, her assumptions of what "sexual liberation" meant were suddenly up for debate. In the thick of personal and political turmoil, Nona turned to the words of history's sexual revolutionaries-including her late mother, early radical pro-sex feminist Ellen Willis. At a time when sex has never been more accepted and feminism has never been more mainstream, Nona asked herself- What, exactly, do I want? And are my sexual and romantic desires even possible amid the horrors and bribes of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy? Nona's attempt to find the answer places her search for authentic intimacy alongside her family history and other stories stretching back nearly two hundred years. Stories of ambivalent wives and unchill sluts, free lovers and radical lesbians, sensitive men and woke misogynists, women who risk everything for sex-who buy sex, reject sex, have bad sex and good sex. The result is a brave, bold, and vulnerable exploration of what sexual freedom can mean. Bad Sex is Nona's own journey to sexual satisfaction and romantic happiness, which not only lays bare the triumphs and flaws of contemporary feminism but also shines a light on universal questions of desire.
Everything I Know about Love by Dolly Alderton New York Times Bestseller "There is no writer quite like Dolly Alderton working today and very soon the world will know it." --Lisa Taddeo, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Three Women "Dolly Alderton has always been a sparkling Roman candle of talent. She is funny, smart, and explosively engaged in the wonders and weirdness of the world. But what makes this memoir more than mere entertainment is the mature and sophisticated evolution that Alderton describes in these pages. It's a beautifully told journey and a thoughtful, important book. I loved it." --Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and City of Girls The wildly funny, occasionally heartbreaking internationally bestselling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and--above all else-- realizing that you are enough. Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton's unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age--making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones' Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.
Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran From the New York Times bestselling author of How to Be a Woman and Moranthology comes a collection of Caitlin Moran's award-winning London Times columns that takes a clever, hilarious look at celebrities, society, and the wacky world we live in today--including three major new pieces exclusive to this book. When Caitlin Moran sat down to choose her favorite pieces for her new book, she realized that they all shared a common theme--the same old problems and the same old ass-hats. Then she thought of the word 'Moranifesto', and she knew what she had to do... Introducing every piece and weaving her writing together into a brilliant, seamless narrative--just as she did in Moranthology--Caitlin combines the best of her recent columns with lots of new writing unique to this book as she offers a characteristically fun and witty look at the news, celebrity culture, and society. Featuring strong and important pieces on poverty, the media, and class, Moranifesto also focuses on how socially engaged we've become as a society. And of course, Caitlin is never afraid to address the big issues, such as Benedict Cumberbatch and duffel coats. Who else but Caitlin Moran--a true modern Renaissance woman--could deal with topics as pressing and diverse as the beauty of musicals, affordable housing, Daft Punk, and why the Internet is like a drunken toddler? Covering everything from Hillary Clinton to UTIs, Caitlin's manifesto is an engaging and mischievous rallying call for our times.
Profit and Punishment by Tony Messenger In Profit and Punishment, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished. "Intimate, raw, and utterly scathing" -- Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water "Crucial evidence that the justice system is broken and has to be fixed. Please read this book." --James Patterson, #1 New York Times bestselling author As a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony Messenger has spent years in county and municipal courthouses documenting how poor Americans are convicted of minor crimes and then saddled with exorbitant fines and fees. If they are unable to pay, they are often sent to prison, where they are then charged a pay-to-stay bill, in a cycle that soon creates a mountain of debt that can take years to pay off. These insidious penalties are used to raise money for broken local and state budgets, often overseen by for-profit companies, and it is one of the central issues of the criminal justice reform movement. In the tradition of Evicted and The New Jim Crow, Messenger has written a call to arms, shining a light on a two-tiered system invisible to most Americans. He introduces readers to three single mothers caught up in this system: living in poverty in Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, whose lives are upended when minor offenses become monumental financial and personal catastrophes. As these women struggle to clear their debt and move on with their lives, readers meet the dogged civil rights advocates and lawmakers fighting by their side to create a more equitable and fair court of justice. In this remarkable feat of reporting, Tony Messenger exposes injustice that is agonizing and infuriating in its mundane cruelty, as he champions the rights and dignity of some of the most vulnerable Americans.
The Correspondents by Judith Mackrell The riveting, untold history of a group of heroic women reporters who revolutionized the narrative of World War II--from Martha Gellhorn, who out-scooped her husband, Ernest Hemingway, to Lee Miller, a Vogue cover model turned war correspondent. "Thrilling from the first page to the last." --Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women "Just as women are so often written out of war, so it seems are the female correspondents. Mackrell corrects this omission admirably with stories of six of the best...Mackrell has done us all a great service by assembling their own fascinating stories." --New York Times Book Review On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms with men. The Correspondents follows six remarkable women as their lives and careers intertwined: Martha Gellhorn, who got the scoop on Ernest Hemingway on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller, who went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine's official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz, who hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, a "society girl columnist" turned combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth, the first English journalist to break the news of World War II; and Helen Kirkpatrick, the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to men. From chasing down sources and narrowly dodging gunfire to conducting tumultuous love affairs and socializing with luminaries like Eleanor Roosevelt, Picasso, and Man Ray, these six women are captured in all their complexity. With her gripping, intimate, and nuanced portrait, Judith Mackrell celebrates these courageous reporters who risked their lives for the scoop.
I Hate Running and You Can Too by Brendan Leonard BRENDAN LEONARD HATES RUNNING. He hates it so much that he once logged fifty-two marathon-length runs in fifty-two weeks. Now he's sharing everything he's learned about the sport so that you can hate it too. Packed with wisdom, humor, attitude, tips, and quotes--and more than sixty illuminating charts--I Hate Running and You Can Too delivers a powerful message of motivation from a truly relatable mentor. Leonard nails the love-hate relationship most runners have with the sport. He knows the difficulty of getting off the couch, teaches us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, embraces the mix of running with walking. And he shares all that he's learned--celebrating the mantra of "Easy, light, smooth, and fast," observing that any body that runs is a runner's body. Plus Leonard knows all the practical stuff, from training methods to advice for when you hit a setback or get injured. Even the answer to that big question a lot of runners occasionally ask: Why? Easy: Running helps us understand commitment, develop patience, discover self-discipline, find mental toughness, and prove to ourselves that we can do something demanding. And, of course, burn off that extra serving of nachos.
The Age of Entitlement by Christopher Caldwell A major American intellectual makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, instead left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled--and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences. Even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high--in wealth, freedom, and social stability--and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations. Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half century, taking readers on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycontin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules. Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement is a brilliant and ambitious argument about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems--and drove it toward conflict.
The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker A thought-provoking, gorgeously illustrated gift book that will spark your creativity and help you rediscover your passion with "simple, low-stakes activities [that] can open up the world."--The New York Times Welcome to the era of white noise. Our lives are in constant tether to phones, to email, and to social media. In this age of distraction, the ability to experience and be present is often lost: to think and to see and to listen. Enter Rob Walker's The Art of Noticing--an inspiring volume that will help you see the world anew. Through a series of simple and playful exercises--131 of them--Walker maps ways for you to become a clearer thinker, a better listener, a more creative workplace colleague, and finally, to rediscover what really matters to you.
The Old-Fashioned by Robert Simonson; Daniel Krieger (Photographer) A complete history of one of the world's most iconic cocktails--now the poster child of the modern cocktail revival--with fifty recipes for classic variations as well as contemporary updates. No single cocktail is as iconic, as beloved, or as discussed and fought-over as the Old-Fashioned. Its formula is simple- just whiskey, bitters, sugar, and ice. But how you combine those ingredients-in what proportion, using which brands, and with what kind of garnish-is the subject of much impassioned debate. The Old-Fashioned is the spirited, delightfully unexpected story of this renowned and essential drink- its birth as the ur-cocktail in the nineteenth century, darker days in the throes of Prohibition, re-ascension in the 1950s and 1960s (as portrayed and re-popularized by Don Draper on Mad Men), and renaissance as the star of the contemporary craft cocktail movement. Also featured are more than forty cocktail recipes, including classic variations, regional twists, and contemporary updates from top bartenders around the country. All are accessible, delicious, and elegant in their simplicity, demonstrating the versatility and timelessness of the Old-Fashioned formula. With its rich history, stunning photography, and impeccable recipes, The Old-Fashioned is a celebration of one of America's greatest bibulous achievements. It is a necessary addition to any true whiskey-or cocktail-lover's bookshelf, and destined to become a classic on par with its namesake beverage.
Zine by Pagan Kennedy Back in print for the first time in a decade, this is the hilarious autobiography of a pioneer of the 1990s zine movement. A young woman named Pagan, having just graduated from a writing program at a very prestigious university, is left with a single burning question: Now what? She then takes an unusual step by deciding to invent her new self--the one the public will know--by starting her own magazine, one that will be written, created, and star none other than herself.
The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson This beloved New York Times bestselling memoir from "Ask Amy" is a warm and moving true story of second chances in a tiny upstate New York town. Dear Amy, First my husband told me he didn't love me. Then he said he didn't think he had ever really loved me. Then he left me with a baby to raise by myself. Amy, I don't want to be a single mother. I told myself I'd never be divorced. And now here I am -- exactly where I didn't want to be! My daughter and I live in London. We don't really have any friends here. What should we do? Desperate Dear Desperate, I have an idea. Take your baby, get on a plane, and move back to your dinky hometown in upstate New York -- the place you couldn't wait to leave when you were young. Live with your sister in the back bedroom of her tiny bungalow. Cry for five weeks. Nestle in with your quirky family of hometown women -- many of them single, like you. Drink lots of coffee and ask them what to do. Do your best to listen to their advice but don't necessarily follow it. Start to work in Washington, D.C. Start to date. Make friends. Fail up. Develop a career as a job doula. Teach nursery school and Sunday School. Watch your daughter grow. When she's a teenager, just when you're both getting comfortable, uproot her and move to Chicago to take a job writing a nationally syndicated advice column. Do your best to replace a legend. Date some more. Love fiercely. Laugh with abandon. Grab your second chance -- and your third, and your fourth. Send your daughter to college. Cry for five more weeks. Move back again to your dinky hometown and the women who helped raise you. Find love, finally. And take care. Amy
The Joy of Syntax by June Casagrande Language columnist June Casagrande presents a fun and breezy guide to everything a grown-up interested in grammar needs to know. When it comes to grammar, it seems like everyone--even die-hard word nerds--feel they "missed something" in school. The Joy of Syntax picks up where sixth grade left off, providing a fresh foundation in English syntax served up by someone with an impressive record of making this otherwise inaccessible subject a true joy. With simple, pithy information on everything from basic parts of speech and sentence structure to usage and grammar pitfalls, this guide provides everything you need to approach grammar with confidence.
Messy by Tim Harford "Utterly fascinating. Tim Harford shows that if you want to be creative and resilient, you need a little more disorder in your world." --Adam Grant, New York Times-bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take "Engrossing." --New York Times From the award-winning columnist and author of the national bestseller The Undercover Economist comes a provocative big idea book about the genuine benefits of being messy: at home, at work, in the classroom, and beyond. Look out for Tim's next book, Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy. Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it's important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead. Using research from neuroscience, psychology, social science, as well as captivating examples of real people doing extraordinary things, Tim Harford explains that the human qualities we value - creativity, responsiveness, resilience - are integral to the disorder, confusion, and disarray that produce them. From the music studio of Brian Eno to the Lincoln Memorial with Martin Luther King, Jr., from the board room to the classroom, messiness lies at the core of how we innovate, how we achieve, how we reach each other - in short, how we succeed. In Messy, you'll learn about the unexpected connections between creativity and mess; understand why unexpected changes of plans, unfamiliar people, and unforeseen events can help generate new ideas and opportunities as they make you anxious and angry; and come to appreciate that the human inclination for tidiness - in our personal and professional lives, online, even in children's play - can mask deep and debilitating fragility that keep us from innovation. Stimulating and readable as it points exciting ways forward, Messy is an insightful exploration of the real advantages of mess in our lives.
Why Didn't You Tell Me? by Carmen Rita Wong An immigrant mother's long-held secrets upend her daughter's understanding of her family, her identity, and her place in the world in this powerful and dramatic memoir "Riveting . . . [Wong] tells her story in vivid conversational prose that will make readers feel they're listening to a master storyteller on a long car trip. . . . Hers is a hero's journey."--The New York Times Book Review ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar, Kirkus Reviews My mother carried a powerful secret. A secret that shaped my life and the lives of everyone around me in ways she could not have imagined. Carmen Rita Wong has always craved a sense of belonging: First as a toddler in a warm room full of Black and brown Latina women, like her mother, Lupe, cheering her dancing during her childhood in Harlem. And in Chinatown, where her immigrant father, "Papi" Wong, a hustler, would show her and her older brother off in opulent restaurants decorated in red and gold. Then came the almost exclusively white playgrounds of New Hampshire after her mother married her stepfather, Marty, who seemed to be the ideal of the white American dad. As Carmen entered this new world with her new family--Lupe and Marty quickly had four more children--her relationship with her mother became fraught with tension, suspicion, and conflict, explained only years later by the secrets her mother had kept for so long. And when those secrets were revealed, bringing clarity to so much of Carmen's life, it was too late for answers. When her mother passed away, Carmen wanted to shake her  soul by its shoulders and demand: Why didn't you tell me? A former national television host, advice columnist, and professor, Carmen searches to understand who she really is as she discovers her mother's hidden history, facing the revelations that seep out. Why Didn't You Tell Me? is a riveting and poignant story of Carmen's experience of race and culture in America and how they shape who we think we are.
Downsizing the Family Home by Marni Jameson; Mark Brunetz (Foreword by) "This is essential reading for anyone clearing out your own or a loved one's home. . . . invaluable." --The Wall Street Journal It's a rite of passage almost no one will escape: the difficult, emotional journey of downsizing your or your aging parents' home. Here, nationally syndicated home columnist Marni Jameson sensitively guides readers through the process, from opening that first closet, to sorting through a lifetime's worth of possessions, to selling the homestead itself. Using her own personal journey as a basis, she helps you figure out a strategy and create a mindset to accomplish the task quickly, respectfully, rewardingly--and, in the best of situations, even memorably. Throughout, she combines her been-there experience with insights from national experts--antiques appraisers, garage-sale gurus, professional organizers, and psychologists--to offer practical wisdom and heartwarming advice so you know with certainty what to keep, toss or sell. Winner of: the 2017 Gold National Mature Media Award; the 2017 Silver EXCEL Award in the General Audience Book category; the 2016 Silver Nautilus Award; and the 2016 Bronze National Mature Media Award!  
The Game Must Go On by John Klima On December 7, 1941, as the battleships of Pearl Harbor smoldered, one of the most powerful athletes in America, Detroit Tigers MVP Hank Greenberg, made a tumultuous decision-to leave the baseball field for the field of war. His decision left baseball's place during the war uncertain as more and more ballplayers, famous and unknown alike, put off their careers to go into the fight. President Roosevelt was faced with a difficult decision: stop all of professional baseball for the good of the victory, but, in doing so, risk losing a vital part of morale. He decided that, whatever it took, THE GAME MUST GO ON. This is the story of American baseball history during World War II-of both the players who left to join the war and of the ones who struggled to keep the game alive on the home front. Taking the place of the big shots turned soldiers, sailors, and combat pilots were misfit replacement players. While Greenberg represented the player who served, Pete Gray symbolized the player who stayed. He was a one-armed outfielder who overcame insurmountable odds to become a professional athlete. John Klima drops us straight into 1941-1945. Culminating in the 1945 pennant race where Greenberg and Gray's paths memorably crossed, Klima shows us how World War II made the country come of age and took baseball with it. This is the story of how the games we play changed because of the battles we fought.
Dirt by William Bryant Logan "You are about to read a lot about dirt, which no one knows very much about." So begins the cult classic that brings mystery and magic to "that stuff that won't come off your collar." John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Saint Phocas, Darwin, and Virgil parade through this thought-provoking work, taking their place next to the dung beetle, the compost heap, dowsing, historical farming, and the microscopic biota that till the soil. Whether William Bryant Logan is traversing the far reaches of the cosmos or plowing through our planet's crust, his delightful, elegant, and surprisingly soulful meditations greatly enrich our concept of "dirt," that substance from which we all arise and to which we all must return.
It Ended Badly by Jennifer Wright A history of heartbreak-replete with beheadings, uprisings, creepy sex dolls, and celebrity gossip-and its disastrously bad consequences throughout time Spanning eras and cultures from ancient Rome to medieval England to 1950s Hollywood, Jennifer Wright's It Ended Badly guides you through the worst of the worst in historically bad breakups. In the throes of heartbreak, Emperor Nero had just about everyone he ever loved-from his old tutor to most of his friends-put to death. Oscar Wilde's lover, whom he went to jail for, abandoned him when faced with being cut off financially from his wealthy family and wrote several self-serving books denying the entire affair. And poor volatile Caroline Lamb sent Lord Byron one hell of a torch letter and enclosed a bloody lock of her own pubic hair. Your obsessive social media stalking of your ex isn't looking so bad now, is it? With a wry wit and considerable empathy, Wright digs deep into the archives to bring these thirteen terrible breakups to life. She educates, entertains, and really puts your own bad breakup conduct into perspective. It Ended Badly is for anyone who's ever loved and lost and maybe sent one too many ill-considered late-night emails to their ex, reminding us that no matter how badly we've behaved, no one is as bad as Henry VIII.
If You Ask Me by Mary Jo Binker (Editor); Eleanor. Roosevelt Experience the "heartwarming, smart, and at times even humorous" (Woman's World) wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt in this annotated collection of the candid advice columns that she wrote for more than twenty years. In 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt embarked on a new career as an advice columnist. She had already transformed the role of first lady with her regular press conferences, her activism on behalf of women, minorities, and youth, her lecture tours, and her syndicated newspaper column. When Ladies Home Journal offered her an advice column, she embraced it as yet another way for her to connect with the public. "If You Ask Me" quickly became a lifeline for Americans of all ages. Over the twenty years that Eleanor wrote her advice column, no question was too trivial and no topic was out of bounds. Practical, warm-hearted, and often witty, Eleanor's answers were so forthright her editors included a disclaimer that her views were not necessarily those of the magazines or the Roosevelt administration. Asked, for example, if she had any Republican friends, she replied, "I hope so." Queried about whether or when she would retire, she said, "I never plan ahead." As for the suggestion that federal or state governments build public bomb shelters, she considered the idea "nonsense." Covering a wide variety of topics--everything from war, peace, and politics to love, marriage, religion, and popular culture--these columns reveal Eleanor Roosevelt's warmth, humanity, and timeless relevance.
Foreverland by Heather Havrilesky "One of the first honest, moving and funny portrayals of a solid marriage I have ever read." --Jessica Grose, The New York Times A Best Book of 2022 from The New Yorker and Chicago Tribune An illuminating, poignant, and savagely funny examination of modern marriage from Ask Polly advice columnist Heather Havrilesky If falling in love is the peak of human experience, then marriage is the slow descent down that mountain, on a trail built from conflict, compromise, and nagging doubts. Considering the limited economic advantages to marriage, the deluge of other mate options a swipe away, and the fact that almost half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce anyway, why do so many of us still chain ourselves to one human being for life? In Foreverland, Heather Havrilesky illustrates the delights, aggravations, and sublime calamities of her marriage over the span of fifteen years, charting an unpredictable course from meeting her one true love to slowly learning just how much energy is required to keep that love aflame. This refreshingly honest portrait of a marriage reveals that our relationships are not simply "happy" or "unhappy," but something much murkier--at once unsavory, taxing, and deeply satisfying. With tales of fumbled proposals, harrowing suburban migrations, external temptations, and the bewildering insults of growing older, Foreverland is a work of rare candor and insight. Havrilesky traces a path from daydreaming about forever for the first time to understanding what a tedious, glorious drag forever can be.
Hola Papi by John Paul Brammer LGBTQ advice columnist John Paul Brammer writes a "wise and charming" (David Sedaris) memoir-in-essays chronicling his journey from a queer, mixed-race kid in America's heartland to becoming the "Chicano Carrie Bradshaw" of his generation. "A master class of tone and tenderness." --The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "Should be required reading." --Los Angeles Times The first time someone called John Paul (JP) Brammer "Papi" was on the gay hookup app Grindr. At first, it was flattering; JP took this as white-guy speak for "hey, handsome." But then it happened again and again...and again, leaving JP wondering: Who the hell is Papi? Soon, this racialized moniker became the inspiration for his now wildly popular advice column "¡Hola Papi!," launching his career as the Cheryl Strayed for young queer people everywhere--and some straight people too. JP had his doubts at first--what advice could he really offer while he himself stumbled through his early twenties? Sometimes the best advice comes from looking within, which is what JP does in his column and book--and readers have flocked to him for honest, heartfelt wisdom, and more than a few laughs. In this hilarious, tenderhearted book, JP shares his story of growing up biracial and in the closet in America's heartland, while attempting to answer some of life's most challenging questions: How do I let go of the past? How do I become the person I want to be? Is there such a thing as being too gay? Should I hook up with my grade school bully now that he's out of the closet? Questions we've all asked ourselves, surely. ¡Hola Papi! is "a warm, witty compendium of hard-won life lessons," (Harper's Bazaar) for anyone--gay, straight, and everything in between--who has ever taken stock of their unique place in the world.
Eat, Drink and Remarry by Margo Howard Despite her many years of offering relationship advice as a syndicated columnist--not to mention her pedigree as the daughter of the woman the world revered as Ann Landers-- Margo Howard had to walk down the aisle four times before getting it right. Now the outspoken and witty Howard shares the sometimes rueful, always optimistic story of her adventures in pursuit of the perfect mate. Eat Drink and Remarry is the candid, funny no-holds-barred memoir of Howard's enduring belief in marriage as an institution--despite the often contrary evidence of her own experience. As she chronicles the courtships, marriages, dalliances and divorces that shaped her adulthood, she recalls people and events that left their mark on her life, including her famous (and frank) mother her children and a host of colleagues, from prize-winning journalists and scientists to Hollywood stars. Eat, Drink and Remarry is an endearing book about second (and third and fourth) chances, about the sometimes cockeyed optimism of love and about finding what's right for you--no matter how long it takes.