Download or read book These Precious Days written by Ann Patchett and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

Download or read book The Plague Year written by Lawrence Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

Download or read book Quarantined written by Drethi Anis and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *This book is part of a SERIES and NOT a standalone.A gripping, friends-to-lovers-to-enemies, dark romance.New York City-not for the faint-hearted or the sweetest of souls. The last thing I expected was to be back in this city, after all these years. And I definitely did not expect to be back in this house, where it all started. I have spent years avoiding this place, and the cold hard reality of what happened here. But I have no choice. We are all quarantined together in this house. It took the end of the world, for me to come back here and face him.Milo Sinclair.Once my legal guardian and savior in life. The person who saved me from drowning in loneliness. Who gave me everything I ever wanted. But then he took everything away from me. Plus interest. He broke me. He will not break me again.This is a dark forbidden romance. It contains discussions about the pandemic, mental health issues, mature new adults. It also contains dubious situations that some readers might find offensive.Dark romance is subjective. Some readers have found this book to be a light read while others were sensitive to the material. Milo isn't a normal romance hero, and some might not consider him a hero at ALL. So, please don't read this if any of the above bothers you.Quarantined is book one of The Quarantine Series.

Download or read book Fevers Feuds and Diamonds written by Paul Farmer and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Paul Farmer brings his considerable intellect, empathy, and expertise to bear in this powerful and deeply researched account of the Ebola outbreak that struck West Africa in 2014. It is hard to imagine a more timely or important book.” —Bill and Melinda Gates "[The] history is as powerfully conveyed as it is tragic . . . Illuminating . . . Invaluable." —Steven Johnson, The New York Times Book Review In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it? Paul Farmer, the internationally renowned doctor and anthropologist, experienced the Ebola outbreak firsthand—Partners in Health, the organization he founded, was among the international responders. In Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, he offers the first substantive account of this frightening, fast-moving episode and its implications. In vibrant prose, Farmer tells the harrowing stories of Ebola victims while showing why the medical response was slow and insufficient. Rebutting misleading claims about the origins of Ebola and why it spread so rapidly, he traces West Africa’s chronic health failures back to centuries of exploitation and injustice. Under formal colonial rule, disease containment was a priority but care was not – and the region’s health care woes worsened, with devastating consequences that Farmer traces up to the present. This thorough and hopeful narrative is a definitive work of reportage, history, and advocacy, and a crucial intervention in public-health discussions around the world.

Download or read book Flash Feedback Grades 6 12 written by Matthew Johnson and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beat burnout with time-saving best practices for feedback For ELA teachers, the danger of burnout is all too real. Inundated with seemingly insurmountable piles of papers to read, respond to, and grade, many teachers often find themselves struggling to balance differentiated, individualized feedback with the one resource they are already overextended on—time. Matthew Johnson offers classroom-tested solutions that not only alleviate the feedback-burnout cycle, but also lead to significant growth for students. These time-saving strategies built on best practices for feedback help to improve relationships, ignite motivation, and increase student ownership of learning. Flash Feedback also takes teachers to the next level of strategic feedback by sharing: How to craft effective, efficient, and more memorable feedback Strategies for scaffolding students through the meta-cognitive work necessary for real revision A plan for how to create a culture of feedback, including lessons for how to train students in meaningful peer response Downloadable online tools for teacher and student use Moving beyond the theory of working smarter, not harder, Flash Feedback works deeper by developing practices for teacher efficiency that also boost effectiveness by increasing students’ self-efficacy, improving the clarity of our messages, and ultimately creating a classroom centered around meaningful feedback.

Download or read book Social Justice Is for Everyone written by Joan Beckwith and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join a conversation about racism, gender and sexuality, disability and refugee policy, abuse of workers, care of children and older people, death and euthanasia, health and mental health, economic inequality, and access to education.

Download or read book iPhone Unlocked written by David Pogue and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Make the most of your iPhone with this witty, authoritative, full-color guide to iOS 14. Apple has sold over 2.2 billion iPhones—but not one has come with a user guide. And with each annual update of iOS, Apple piles on more and more features; at this moment, the Settings app alone bristles with over 1,000 options. In iPhone Unlocked, the #1 bestselling iPhone author David Pogue offers a curated guide to the essential and useful features of the new iPhone 12 family—and all other models that can run the iOS 14 software. A former New York Times tech columnist and bestselling how-to author, no one is better equipped than Pogue to offer expert instruction to this complicated iPhone. With his trademark humor, crystal-clear prose, and 300 full-color illustrations, Pogue guides readers through everything in iOS 14: Home-screen widgets, the new App Library, the all-new Translate app, the redesigned Search, FaceTime, and calling screens, and much more. Whether you’re a new iPhone user or a seasoned veteran, iPhone Unlocked is a gorgeous, authoritative, all-in-one master class on all things iPhone.

Download or read book Lockdown Lovers written by Michael O'Sullivan and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2021 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lockdown Lovers is a story set across two continents, six humans and a pangolin, the mammal reportedly at the root of the virus. Pushed to the limits of their endurance in lockdown and then quarantine conditions, John Ryan, a Hong Kong academic, and Phoebe Ho, a Hong Kong district councilor, decide to break the rules of their quarantine and rediscover what has been denied them for too long - impassioned human contact. The novel alternates between the perspectives of John, John's wife Sue, his son Sam, Phoebe, Kwok-ying, a Government Health official, Princess Selina, a millionaire's heiress, and the pangolin, as they all find their own way to deal with the dramatic changes in their lives environments. John even travels back to Ireland, desperate to assist his parents in their lockdown. The story ends in Hong Kong in 2022, two years after the first appearance of the virus in the city. The novel reminds us of our undying capacities for contact and closeness even at times of pandemic, when they seem threatened like never before.

Download or read book Prune written by Gabrielle Hamilton and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From Gabrielle Hamilton, bestselling author of Blood, Bones & Butter, comes her eagerly anticipated cookbook debut filled with signature recipes from her celebrated New York City restaurant Prune. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE SEASON BY Time • O: The Oprah Magazine • Bon Appétit • Eater A self-trained cook turned James Beard Award–winning chef, Gabrielle Hamilton opened Prune on New York’s Lower East Side fifteen years ago to great acclaim and lines down the block, both of which continue today. A deeply personal and gracious restaurant, in both menu and philosophy, Prune uses the elements of home cooking and elevates them in unexpected ways. The result is delicious food that satisfies on many levels. Highly original in concept, execution, look, and feel, the Prune cookbook is an inspired replica of the restaurant’s kitchen binders. It is written to Gabrielle’s cooks in her distinctive voice, with as much instruction, encouragement, information, and scolding as you would find if you actually came to work at Prune as a line cook. The recipes have been tried, tasted, and tested dozens if not hundreds of times. Intended for the home cook as well as the kitchen professional, the instructions offer a range of signals for cooks—a head’s up on when you have gone too far, things to watch out for that could trip you up, suggestions on how to traverse certain uncomfortable parts of the journey to ultimately help get you to the final destination, an amazing dish. Complete with more than with more than 250 recipes and 250 color photographs, home cooks will find Prune’s most requested recipes—Grilled Head-on Shrimp with Anchovy Butter, Bread Heels and Pan Drippings Salad, Tongue and Octopus with Salsa Verde and Mimosa’d Egg, Roasted Capon on Garlic Crouton, Prune’s famous Bloody Mary (and all 10 variations). Plus, among other items, a chapter entitled “Garbage”—smart ways to repurpose foods that might have hit the garbage or stockpot in other restaurant kitchens but are turned into appetizing bites and notions at Prune. Featured here are the recipes, approach, philosophy, evolution, and nuances that make them distinctively Prune’s. Unconventional and honest, in both tone and content, this book is a welcome expression of the cookbook as we know it. Praise for Prune “Fresh, fascinating . . . entirely pleasurable . . . Since 1999, when the chef Gabrielle Hamilton put Triscuits and canned sardines on the first menu of her East Village bistro, Prune, she has nonchalantly broken countless rules of the food world. The rule that a successful restaurant must breed an empire. The rule that chefs who happen to be women should unconditionally support one another. The rule that great chefs don’t make great writers (with her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter). And now, the rule that restaurant food has to be simplified and prettied up for home cooks in order to produce a useful, irresistible cookbook. . . . [Prune] is the closest thing to the bulging loose-leaf binder, stuck in a corner of almost every restaurant kitchen, ever to be printed and bound between cloth covers. (These happen to be a beautiful deep, dark magenta.)”—The New York Times “One of the most brilliantly minimalist cookbooks in recent memory . . . at once conveys the thrill of restaurant cooking and the wisdom of the author, while making for a charged reading experience.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Download or read book It s Complicated written by Danah Boyd and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the online social habits of American teens and analyzes the role technology and social media plays in their lives, examining common misconceptions about such topics as identity, privacy, danger, and bullying.

Download or read book Your Rainforest Mind A Guide to the Well Being of Gifted Adults and Youth written by Paula Prober and published by Editeurs divers USA. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you long to drive a Ferrari at top speed on the open road, but find yourself always stuck on the freeway during rush hour? Do you wonder how you can feel like "not enough" and "too much" at the same time? Like the rain forest, are you sometimes intense, multilayered, colorful, creative, overwhelming, highly sensitive, complex, and/or idealistic? And, like the rain forest, have you met too many chainsaws?Enter Paula Prober, M.S., M.Ed., who understands the diversity and complexity of minds like yours. In "Your Rainforest Mind: A Guide to the Well-Being of Gifted Youths and Adults," Paula explores the challenges faced by gifted adults of all ages. Through case studies and extensive research, Paula will help you tap into your inner creativity, find peace, and discover the limitless potential that comes with your Rainforest Mind.

Download or read book Best Babysitters Ever written by Caroline Cala and published by Clarion Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The launch of a funny new series about three 12-year-old best friends who start a babysitting club in their small California town. No parents. Unlimited snacks. And, okay, occasionally watching other people's children. What could possibly go wrong?

Download or read book Our Country Friends written by Gary Shteyngart and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Town & Country, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews “A perfect novel for these times and all times, the single textual artifact from the pandemic era I would place in a time capsule as a representation of all that is good and true and beautiful about literature.”—Molly Young, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) Eight friends, one country house, and six months in isolation—a novel about love, friendship, family, and betrayal hailed as a “virtuoso performance” (USA Today) and “an homage to Chekhov with four romances and a finale that will break your heart” (The Washington Post) In the rolling hills of upstate New York, a group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters includes a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a Southern flamethrower of an essayist; and a movie star, the Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family. Both elegiac and very, very funny, Our Country Friends is the most ambitious book yet by the author of the beloved bestseller Super Sad True Love Story.

Download or read book Quarantine Comix written by Rachael Smith and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Funny and sad and relatable and wise – Rachael Smith's Quarantine Comix are like the hug from a friend you didn't know you needed.' Chris Addison 'In a period where every day seemed the same, Rachael found a way to make every day different. A tiny, comforting light of understanding, humour and hope in a dark time.' Kieron Gillen, author and creator of The Wicked + The Divine An award-winning graphic memoir of lockdown life, Quarantine Comix is a funny, tender, heartfelt and insightful look at isolation. Written and drawn every day during the 2020 lockdown and shared online with #QuarantineComix, 2020 Comedy Women in Print-shortlisted Rachael Smith's delightful comics helped people who were isolated all over the world to feel connected. At times laugh-out-loud funny, at others bitter-sweet, philosophical or downright silly, this collection of 200 drawings tells the story of one woman overcoming loneliness and self-doubt with exquisite, wry humour and raw honesty. During a time when many feel anxious and apart from loved ones, Quarantine Comix offers relief in shared experiences. Praise for Stand in Your Power, shortlisted for the 2020 Comedy Women in Print prize: 'Funny, fierce, poignant and reaches the lonely inside us all' Helen Lederer 'Rachael uses humour to address her mental health and she does that successfully.' Jen Brister, author of The Other Mother 'The tone is self-deprecating – she takes a sad situation and creates an invitation to laugh at it.' Hannah Berry, UK Comics Laureate 2019-21 'The execution is one to admire' Janet Ellis 'An important subject turned into pages of visual pathos' Nicola Streeton, LDComic

Download or read book Briar s Book Circle of Magic 4 written by Tamora Pierce and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth book in the Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce.

Download or read book The Future of Nostalgia written by Svetlana Boym and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can one be nostalgic for the home one never had? Why is it that the age of globalization is accompanied by a no less global epidemic of nostalgia? Can we know what we are nostalgic for? In the seventeenth century, Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches, and a trek through the Alps would cure nostalgia. In 1733 a Russian commander, disgusted with the debilitating homesickness rampant among his troops, buried a soldier alive as a deterrent to nostalgia. In her new book, Svetlana Boym develops a comprehensive approach to this elusive ailment. Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities -- St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstam, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, from love letters on Kafka's grave to conversations with Hitler's impersonator, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.

Download or read book The Patient Ferment of the Early Church written by Alan Kreider and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why did the early church grow in the first four hundred years despite disincentives, harassment, and occasional persecution? In this unique historical study, veteran scholar Alan Kreider delivers the fruit of a lifetime of study as he tells the amazing story of the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Challenging traditional understandings, Kreider contends the church grew because the virtue of patience was of central importance in the life and witness of the early Christians. They wrote about patience, not evangelism, and reflected on prayer, catechesis, and worship, yet the church grew--not by specific strategies but by patient ferment.