Download or read book The World Before Us written by Aislinn Hunter and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Strange and absorbing . . . I relished this book' - Penelope Lively, The New York Times Book Review 'Sensitive, melancholy, sharply observant. A work of great power' - Guardian Jane was fifteen when her life changed for ever. In the woods surrounding a Yorkshire country house, she took her eyes off the little girl she was minding and the girl slipped into the trees - never to be seen again. Now an adult, Jane is obsessed with another disappearance: that of a young woman who walked out of a Victorian lunatic asylum one day in 1877. As Jane pieces together moments in history, forgotten stories emerge - of sibling jealousy, illicit affairs, and tragic death . . . 'Ambitious, inticate . . . cleverly innovates while tipping a nod to classic Gothic tropes: dynastic rivalries, crumbling country houses, madhouses and vanished girls' National Post (Canada) 'A brilliant work of humanity and imagination, artful and breathtakingly beautiful. It will continue to haunt long after you have finished reading' Helen Humphreys, author of Nocturne 'Powerful, thought-provoking, haunting and haunted . . . Reminiscent of A.S. Byatt's Possession, it forces you to look at the world - the people around you, the objects they hold dear - in a different light' Globe and Mail (Canada) Aislinn Hunter is the author of a novel, Stay; a collection of stories, What's Left Us; and two collections of poetry, Into the Early Hours and The Possible Past. The World Before Us is her first book of fiction in twelve years. After travelling to London and Edinburgh over the past few years to study for a PhD, Aislinn Hunter now lives and teaches in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Download or read book The World Until Yesterday written by Jared Diamond and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-12-31 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel surveys the history of human societies to answer the question: What can we learn from traditional societies that can make the world a better place for all of us? “As he did in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond continues to make us think with his mesmerizing and absorbing new book." Bookpage Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. Provocative, enlightening, and entertaining, The World Until Yesterday is an essential and fascinating read.

Download or read book Desire of the Everlasting Hills written by Thomas Cahill and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews, his most compelling historical narrative yet. How did an obscure rabbi from a backwater of the Roman Empire come to be the central figure in Western Civilization? Did his influence in fact change the world? These are the questions Thomas Cahill addresses in his subtle and engaging investigation into the life and times of Jesus. Cahill shows us Jesus from his birth to his execution through the eyes of those who knew him and in the context of his time—a time when the Jews were struggling to maintain their beliefs under overlords who imposed their worldview on their subjects. Here is Jesus the loving friend, itinerate preacher, and quiet revolutionary, whose words and actions inspired his followers to journey throughout the Roman world and speak the truth he instilled—in the face of the greatest defeat: Jesus' crucifixion as a common criminal. Daring, provocative, and stunningly original, Cahill's interpretation will both delight and surprise. BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Thomas Cahill's Heretics and Heroes.

Download or read book An Environmental History of Latin America written by Shawn William Miller and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-27 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narration of the mutually mortal historical contest between humans and nature in Latin America. Covering a period that begins with Amerindian civilizations and concludes in the region's present urban agglomerations, the work offers an original synthesis of the current scholarship on Latin America's environmental history and argues that tropical nature played a central role in shaping the region's historical development. Human attitudes, populations, and appetites, from Aztec cannibalism to more contemporary forms of conspicuous consumption, figure prominently in the story. However, characters such as hookworms, whales, hurricanes, bananas, dirt, butterflies, guano, and fungi make more than cameo appearances. Recent scholarship has overturned many of our egocentric assumptions about humanity's role in history. Seeing Latin America's environmental past from the perspective of many centuries illustrates that human civilizations, ancient and modern, have been simultaneously more powerful and more vulnerable than previously thought.

Download or read book American Mojo Lost and Found written by Peter D. Kiernan and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In American Mojo: Lost and Found, Peter D. Kiernan, award-winning author of New York Times bestseller Becoming China’s Bitch, focuses on America’s greatest challenge—and opportunity—restoring the middle class to its full promise and potential. Our educated, skilled and motivated middle class was the cornerstone of America’s postwar economic might, but the country’s dynamic core has struggled and changed dramatically through the last three decades. Kiernan’s extensively researched story, told through individual histories, shows how the middle class flourished under unique circumstances following World War II; and details how our middle class has been rocked and shaped by events abroad as much as at home. By excluding too many Americans, the middle class we reverently recall was fractured from the beginning. What emerges through his storytelling is a picture of middle class decline and opportunity that is fuller, more moving and profound, and ultimately more useful in terms of charting a path forward than other examinations. His unique global perspective is a vital ingredient in charting the way ahead. This new frontier thesis shows that middle class greatness is again within our grasp—if we take some powerful medicine and seize the global opportunity. America possesses the skills and talent the world needs. Americans must embrace what brought our middle class to prominence in the first place—our American Mojo—before it is too late and other countries steal the march. All that is at stake is the soul of our nation.

Download or read book America in 1492 written by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1993-02-02 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Columbus landed in 1492, the New World was far from being a vast expanse of empty wilderness: it was home to some seventy-five million people. They ranged from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, spoke as many as two thousand different languages, and lived in groups that varied from small bands of hunter-gatherers to the sophisticated and dazzling empires of the Incas and Aztecs. This brilliantly detailed and documented volume brings together essays by fifteen leading scholars field to present a comprehensive and richly evocative portrait of Native American life on the eve of Columbus's first landfall. Developed at the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian and edited by award-winning author Alvin M. Josehpy, Jr., America in 1492 is an invaluable work that combines the insights of historians, anthropologists, and students of art, religion, and folklore. Its dozens of illustrations, drawn from largely from the rare books and manuscripts housed at the Newberry Library, open a window on worlds flourished in the Americas five hundred years ago.

Download or read book Them Before Us written by Katy Faust and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Them Before Us has flipped the script on adult-centric attitudes toward marriage, parenthood, and reproductive technologies by framing these issues around a child’s right to be raised by both their mother and father. Set against a backdrop of sound research, the compelling stories throughout each chapter confirm that a child’s mental, physical, and emotional well-being depends on being loved by the two people responsible for their existence. It’s a paradigm shift that will impact the personal and the political, and reframe every marriage and family conversation across the globe. Them Before Us dispels many prevalent, harmful myths concerning children’s rights, such as: • Kids need only love and safety—moms and dads are optional. • Love makes a family—biology is irrelevant. • Marriage is about adults—it has nothing to do with kids. • Children are resilient and will “get over” divorce. • Studies show “no difference” in outcomes for kids with same-sex parents. • Sperm and egg donor kids are fortunate because they are so wanted. • Surrogacy is a great way to help wannabe parents have a baby. • Reproductive technologies are just like adoption. Are you tired of a culture that views adults as victims in family matters, when it’s clear that kids are the ones who truly pay the price? If so, we are your people, and this is your movement.

Download or read book Cunning Women written by Elizabeth Lee and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF GRAZIA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2021 'I loved it. Atmospheric and so good' MARIAN KEYES 'A dark, bewitching and captivating read that had my heart in my mouth by the ending' JENNIFER SAINT, author of ARIADNE Lancashire, 1620. Young Sarah Haworth and her family live as outcasts. They are 'cunning folk', feared by the local villagers by day, but called upon under cover of darkness for healing balms and spells. Against the odds, love blossoms when Sarah meets Daniel, the local farmer's son. But when a new magistrate arrives to investigate a spate of strange deaths, his gaze inevitably turns to Sarah and her family. In a world where cunning women are forced into darkness by powerful men, can Sarah reckon with her fate to protect all she holds dear? 'Fans of intensely atmospheric historical fiction will love this' STYLIST 'Elizabeth Lee's debut novel is timely in its depiction of hysteria and persecution, and beautifully evokes a historical period poised between dark ignorance and long-overdue enlightenment' OBSERVER 'Wonderfully original . . . devastating . . . and fabulously atmospheric' ELODIE HARPER, author of THE WOLF DEN

Download or read book A World Transformed written by Joshua Paddison and published by Heyday. This book was released on 1998 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: California changed dramatically in the years between the founding of the first mission in 1769 and the 1848 gold rush. These eleven eyewitness accounts vividly describe the first European land expedition into an unknown territory; the spread of the missions; the rule of Spain and then Mexico; the rise and fall of California's Russian colony; the emergence of rancho culture; the semi-feudal empires of Vallejo and Sutter; and the arrival of Anglo-Americans as ship-deserters, settlers, traders, and ultimately -- perhaps inevitably -- the masters of California.

Download or read book The Sea Before Us Sunrise at Normandy Book 1 written by Sarah Sundin and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1944, American naval officer Lt. Wyatt Paxton arrives in London to prepare for the Allied invasion of France. He works closely with Dorothy Fairfax, a "Wren" in the Women's Royal Naval Service. Dorothy pieces together reconnaissance photographs with thousands of holiday snapshots of France--including those of her own family's summer home--in order to create accurate maps of Normandy. Maps that Wyatt will turn into naval bombardment plans. As the two spend concentrated time together in the pressure cooker of war, their deepening friendship threatens to turn to love. Dorothy must resist its pull. Her bereaved father depends on her, and her heart already belongs to another man. Wyatt too has much to lose. The closer he gets to Dorothy, the more he fears his efforts to win the war will destroy everything she has ever loved. The tense days leading up to the monumental D-Day landing blaze to life under Sarah Sundin's practiced pen with this powerful new series.

Download or read book Sapiens written by Yuval Noah Harari and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller A Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become? Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.

Download or read book To See the Earth Before the End of the World written by Ed Roberson and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Voelcker Award (PEN America) (2016) In To See the Earth Before the End of the World Ed Roberson presents us with 120 new poems, each speaking in his unique voice and seen through his unique eye. Earth and sky, neighborhood life and ancient myths, the art of seeing and the architecture of the imagination are all among the subjects of these poems. Recurring images and ideas construct a complex picture of our world, ourselves, and the manifold connections tying them together. The poems raise large questions about the natural world and our place in it, and they do not flinch from facing up to those questions. Roberson’s poems range widely through different scales of time and space, invoking along the way history and myth, galaxies and garbage trucks, teapots and the history of photography, mating cranes and Chicago's political machine. This collection is composed of five sequences, each developing a particular constellation of images and ideas related to the vision of the whole. Various journeys become one journey—an epic journey, invoking epic themes. There are songs of creation, pictures of the sorrows of war, celebrations of human labor and human society, a respect for tools and domestic utensils that are well made, the deep background of the past tingeing the colors of the present, and the tragic tones of endings and laments, a pervading awareness of the tears in things. Most of all, there is the exhilaration of a grand, sweeping vision that enlarges our world.

Download or read book The World Before Us written by Thomas Higham and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating investigation of the origin of humans, based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology "Conveys the thrill of archaeological discovery."--Alexander Larman, The Observer "Packs in startling discoveries, impressive insights and the occasional debunking of a foolish idea."--Michael Marshall, New Scientist Fifty thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was not the only species of humans in the world. There were also Neanderthals in what is now Europe, the Near East, and parts of Eurasia; Hobbits (H. floresiensis) on the island of Flores in Indonesia; Denisovans in Siberia and eastern Eurasia; and H. luzonensis in the Philippines. Tom Higham investigates what we know about these other human species and explores what can be learned from the genetic links between them and us. He also looks at whether H. erectus may have survived into the period when our ancestors first moved into Southeast Asia. Filled with thrilling tales of recent scientific discoveries, this book offers an engaging synopsis of our current understanding of human origins and raises new and interesting possibilities--particularly concerning what contact, if any, these other species might have had with us prior to their extinction.

Download or read book Before All the World written by Moriel Rothman-Zecher and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR Best Book of the Year A mesmerizing, inventive story of three souls in 1930s Philadelphia seizing new life while haunted by the old. I do not believe that all the world is darkness. In the swirl of Philadelphia at the end of Prohibition, Leyb meets Charles. They are at a former speakeasy called Cricket’s, a bar that welcomes, as Charles says in his secondhand Yiddish, feygeles. Leyb is startled; fourteen years in amerike has taught him that his native tongue is not known beyond his people. And yet here is suave Charles—fingers stained with ink, an easy manner with the barkeep—a Black man from the Seventh Ward, a fellow traveler of Red Emma’s, speaking Jewish to a young man he will come to call Lion. Lion is haunted by memories of life before, in Zatelsk, where everyone in his village, everyone except the ten non-Jews, a young poet named Gittl, and Leyb himself, was taken to the forest and killed. Then, miraculously, Gittl is in Philadelphia, too, thanks to a poem she wrote and the intervention of a shadowy character known only as the Baroness of Philadelphia. And surrounding Gittl are malokhim, the spirits of her siblings. Flowing and churning and seething with a glorious surge of language, carried along by questions of survival and hope and the possibility of a better world, Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s Before All the World lays bare the impossibility of escaping trauma, the necessity of believing in a better way ahead, and the power that comes from our responsibility to the future. It asks, in the voices of its angels, the most essential question: What do you intend to do before all the world?

Download or read book The Dawn of Everything written by David Graeber and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations

Download or read book The World Before written by Ruth Montgomery and published by Fawcett. This book was released on 1985-03-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1971, Arthur Ford gave Ruth Montgomery six predictions, published in A World Beyond. Every one has come true! In The World Before, he and the Guides offer secret lore of the past and startling new glimpses of the future. Here is the extraordinary story of Creation and the fabulous lost worlds of Atlantis and Mu, the past lives of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Jackie Onassis, Richard Nixon, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and other celebrities. The World Before forecasts things to come, among them: -- A solution to the world's energy problem... -- A reduction in crime throughout America... -- The rise of a new national leader -- in Germany... The World Before -- the dramatic and exciting book that will capture the imagination of everyone who seeks a deeper understanding of the mysteries of life.

Download or read book The Revolution Generation written by Josh Tickell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the activist and Sundance Award-winning filmmaker of Fuel and Kiss the Ground comes an ambitious book showcasing the captivating stories of Millennial change-makers in order to empower and motivate today’s young adults to rise up to their potential for greatness. With eye-opening research and inspiring interviews, The Revolution Generation is the first in-depth exploration of the world-changing activism and potential of people born between 1980 and 2000. Labeled Generation Y or Millennials, theirs is the first digitally fluent generation. From sex and dating, to parental relationships, to jobs and the economy, Millennials live within a dynamic interplay of technological advances and real world setbacks. Their connectivity and global awareness have created astonishing new opportunities, but have also come at a time of peril. According to the United Nations, today’s youth face the ten largest global crises in human history (including the sixth major species extinction, a rapidly changing climate, and a worldwide refugee crisis). In no uncertain terms, the future of humanity rests on their shoulders. While these challenges may be daunting, Millennials are part of the largest, most educated, most digitally plugged-in generation to date and The Revolution Generation elucidates their often-overlooked strengths and shows how they can build a brighter, more sustainable and democratic future for themselves—and all of humanity. The Revolution Generation is also soon to be a full-length documentary featuring Bernie Sanders, Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson, and more.