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Book Dispatches from the Edge

Download or read book Dispatches from the Edge written by Anderson Cooper and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America’s leading reporters shares a deeply personal, extraordinarily powerful look at the most volatile crises he has witnessed around the world. A #1 New York Times Bestseller Anderson Cooper’s groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news. Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world. In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life—from the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq, from the starvation in Niger to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi. Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable story from one of America’s most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters. Praise for Dispatches from the Edge “A smart, soulful page-turner. . . . Cooper is a storyteller with plenty of heart.” —People “From the shores of Sri Lanka to the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, Cooper weaves his experiences at CNN into a moving memoir.” —Newsweek “His vignettes from the world’s horrscapes rise above the swagger of many journalistic memoirs because Cooper writes with competence as well as feeling.” —Washington Post Book World “Anderson Cooper gets New Orleans. . . . This is an emotional, personal reckoning with what he’s seen.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune

Book Magic  Science and Religion and Other Essays

Download or read book Magic Science and Religion and Other Essays written by Bronislaw Malinowski and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vintage book comprises three famous Malinowski essays on the subject of religion. Malinowski is one of the most important and influential anthropologists of all time. He is particularly renowned for his ability to combine the reality of human experience, with the cold calculations of science. An important collection of three of his most famous essays, "Magic, Science and Religion" provides its reader with a series of concepts concerning religion, magic, science, rite and myth. This is undertaken in an attempt to form a definite impression and understanding of the Trobrianders of New Guinea. The chapters of this book include: "Magic, Science and Religion", "Primitive Man and his Religion", "Rational Mastery by Man of his Surroundings", "Faith and Cult", "The Creative Acts of Religion", "Providence in Primitive Life", "Man's Selective Interest in Nature", etcetera. This book is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition - complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

Book Cosmic Apprentice

Download or read book Cosmic Apprentice written by Dorion Sagan and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Refreshingly nonconformist and polemically incisive, Cosmic Apprentice challenges readers to reject both dogma and cliché and instead recover the intellectual adventurousness that should--and can once again--animate both science and philosophy. Informed by a countercultural sensibility, a deep engagement with speculative thought, and a hardheaded scientific skepticism, it advances controversial positions on such seemingly sacrosanct subjects as evolution and entropy.

Book Vanderbilt

Download or read book Vanderbilt written by Anderson Cooper and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times bestselling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty—his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts. One of the Washington Post's Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2021 When eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one could have imagined that one day he would, through ruthlessness, cunning, and a pathological desire for money, build two empires—one in shipping and another in railroads—that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore,” subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of The Breakers—the seventy-room summer estate in Newport, Rhode Island, that Cornelius’s grandson and namesake had built—the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all. Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Cooper and Howe breathe life into the ancestors who built the family’s empire, basked in the Commodore’s wealth, hosted lavish galas, and became synonymous with unfettered American capitalism and high society. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue, from the ornate summer palaces of Newport to the courts of Europe, and all the way to modern-day New York, Cooper and Howe wryly recount the triumphs and tragedies of an American dynasty unlike any other. Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.

Book The Rainbow Comes and Goes

Download or read book The Rainbow Comes and Goes written by Anderson Cooper and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times Bestseller A touching and intimate correspondence between Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, offering timeless wisdom and a revealing glimpse into their lives The Rainbow Comes and Goes is a charming, intimate and fascinating collection of correspondence between broadcaster and #1 New York Times bestselling author Anderson Cooper and his mother, the celebrated Gloria Vanderbilt. Anderson Cooper’s intensely busy career as a journalist for CNN and CBS’ 60 Minutes affords him little time to spend with his ninety-one year old mother. After she briefly fell ill, he and Gloria began a conversation through e-mail unlike any they had ever had before —a correspondence of surprising honesty and depth in which they discussed their lives, the things that matter to them and what they still want to learn about each other. Both a son’s love letter to his mother in her final years and an unconventional mother’s life lessons for her grown son, The Rainbow Comes and Goes offers a rare window into their close relationship and fascinating lives. In these often hilarious and touching exchanges, they share their most private thoughts and the hard-earned truths they’ve learned along the way. Throughout, their distinctive personalities shine through—Anderson’s darker outlook on the world is a brilliant contrast to his mother’s idealism and unwavering optimism. An appealing blend of memoir and inspirational advice, The Rainbow Comes and Goes is a beautiful and affectionate celebration of the profound and universal bond between a parent and child, and, like Tuesdays with Morrie, a thoughtful reflection on life and love, reminding us of the precious knowledge and insight that remains to be shared, no matter what age we are.

Book Completely in Blue

    Book Details:
  • Author : Chris Curry
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2012-01-23
  • ISBN : 9780615562865
  • Pages : 168 pages

Download or read book Completely in Blue written by Chris Curry and published by . This book was released on 2012-01-23 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychosis can single-handedly ruin everything about you in the blink of an eye. Your mind is broken into pieces; shattered from the inside out. Your thoughts race and spiral out of control. It is as though someone else' mind has taken control of your own. You are no longer yourself. You are no longer anyone. You are no longer a part of this world. You could believe that you have supernatural powers, or that the laws of the universe simply do not apply to you. You could believe that you are a world famous musician, an accomplished scholar or that your private helicopter is about to pick you up from the roof of the psychiatric hospital. Rarely do we ever get a glimpse inside the mind of someone suffering psychosis. This is likely because it is such a terrifying ordeal that most do not wish to, or have the energy to, live through it again by writing about it. But Chris Curry knew that as soon as the 'bullet-proof door closed in the Bubble Room, the orderlies held me down, the needle went in and the straightjacket was affixed' that he was in the midst of a story that needed to be told. Completely in Blue: Dispatches from the Edge of Insanity gives you a bird's eye view into the series of unfathomable events that led up to his ultimate psychiatric hospitalization of three months. He leads you on an adventure into the extreme capabilities of the human mind, and shows you how extensive drug abuse can lead you from a nice, laid back musician to a ravaged, violent and escape-prone criminal in a matter of months. Enter into Chris' shattered mind as he slowly becomes convinced that he is a world-famous musician, starts a riot in his former high school, sells drugs for biker gangs, spends his nights dealing MDMA in seedy strip clubs, lights himself on fire with Bacardi 151, repeatedly gets detained by the police and is ultimately taken into custody at gun point after escaping from psychiatric custody. "Sex, drugs and rock and roll meet the mental health 'system.; For anyone who takes sanity for granted, this insanely self-revealing memoir will rock your world. Highly recommended." Dr. Paul Fedoroff, M.D. Chair, University of Ottawa Division of Forensic Psychiatry. Although this book does provide an inside look into the broken mind of an 18-year old, it is ultimately about recovery. The slow, often painful rise up from a broken existence that even those closest to him feared that he wouldn't survive. Curry now works as a public speaker, mental health stigma blogger and mental health and addictions counselor and through his life's work has proven that no matter how dire the circumstances are, recovery is always possible. "Ultimately, this is indeed a story of recovery, one that inspires optimism no matter how long or difficult that journey might be... This book should be required reading for high school and post-secondary social science programs and valued as a guide by mental health practitioners committed to eliminating the stigma of mental illness." - Dr. Pamela Prince, Director - Strategic Planning and Evaluation, The Royal According to Dr. Gabor Mate, the pioneer of the safe-injection site in Vancouver's Downtown East Side and award-winning author, it is a "very personal and wrenching description of mental illness. Very honest; very vividly written." If you, or someone you love, is suffering from mental illness or addiction, this book is a must-read. You can contact Chris Curry via http://www.chriscurry.ca

Book With Dogs at the Edge of Life

Download or read book With Dogs at the Edge of Life written by Colin Dayan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original and provocative book, Colin Dayan tackles head-on the inexhaustible world, at once tender and fierce, of dogs and humans. We follow the tracks of dogs in the bayous of Louisiana, the streets of Istanbul, and the humane societies of the United States, and in the memories and myths of the humans who love them. Dayan reorients our ethical and political assumptions through a trans-species engagement that risks as much as it promises. She makes a powerful case for questioning what we think of as our deepest-held beliefs and, with dogs in the lead, unsettles the dubious promises of liberal humanism. Moving seamlessly between memoir, case law, and film, Dayan takes politics and animal studies in a new direction—one that gives us glimpses of how we can think beyond ourselves and with other beings. Her unconventional perspective raises hard questions and renews what it means for any animal or human to live in the twenty-first century. Nothing less than a challenge for us to confront violence and suffering even in the privileged precincts of modernity, this searing and lyrical book calls for another way to think the world. Theoretically sophisticated yet aimed at a broad readership, With Dogs at the Edge of Life illuminates how dogs—and their struggles—take us beyond sentimentality and into a form of thought that can make a difference to our lives.

Book Rising

    Book Details:
  • Author : Elizabeth Rush
  • Publisher : Milkweed Editions
  • Release : 2018-06-12
  • ISBN : 1571319700
  • Pages : 220 pages

Download or read book Rising written by Elizabeth Rush and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, this powerful elegy for our disappearing coast “captures nature with precise words that almost amount to poetry” (The New York Times). Hailed as “the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing” (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love. With every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through these dramatic changes, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish. Rush sheds light on the unfolding crises through firsthand testimonials—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—woven together with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities. A Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal Best Book Of 2018 Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award A Chicago Tribune Top Ten Book of 2018

Book The Next Civil War

    Book Details:
  • Author : Stephen Marche
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2023-01-03
  • ISBN : 1982123222
  • Pages : 256 pages

Download or read book The Next Civil War written by Stephen Marche and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Should be required reading for anyone interested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government.” —The New York Times Book Review * “Well researched and eloquently presented.” —The Atlantic * “Delivers Cormac McCarthy-worthy drama; while the nonfictional asides imbue that drama with the authority of documentary.” —The New York Times Book Review A celebrated journalist takes a fiercely divided America and imagines five chilling scenarios that lead to its collapse, based on in-depth interviews with experts of all kinds. The United States is coming to an end. The only question is how. On a small two-lane bridge in a rural county that loathes the federal government, the US Army uses lethal force to end a standoff with hard-right anti-government patriots. Inside an ordinary diner, a disaffected young man with a handgun takes aim at the American president stepping in for an impromptu photo-op, and a bullet splits the hyper-partisan country into violently opposed mourners and revelers. In New York City, a Category 2 hurricane plunges entire neighborhoods underwater and creates millions of refugees overnight—a blow that comes on the heels of a financial crash and years of catastrophic droughts—and tips America over the edge into ruin. These nightmarish scenarios are just three of the five possibilities most likely to spark devastating chaos in the United States that are brought to life in The Next Civil War, a chilling and deeply researched work of speculative nonfiction. Drawing upon sophisticated predictive models and nearly two hundred interviews with experts—civil war scholars, military leaders, law enforcement officials, secret service agents, agricultural specialists, environmentalists, war historians, and political scientists—journalist Stephen Marche predicts the terrifying future collapse that so many of us do not want to see unfolding in front of our eyes. Marche has spoken with soldiers and counterinsurgency experts about what it would take to control the population of the United States, and the battle plans for the next civil war have already been drawn up. Not by novelists, but by colonels. No matter your political leaning, most of us can sense that America is barreling toward catastrophe—of one kind or another. Relevant and revelatory, The Next Civil War plainly breaks down the looming threats to America and is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of its people, its land, and its government.

Book Survive

    Book Details:
  • Author : Les Stroud
  • Publisher : Harper Collins
  • Release : 2012-07-17
  • ISBN : 1443418447
  • Pages : 326 pages

Download or read book Survive written by Les Stroud and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-07-17 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You’re alone in the forest on a fine autumn day with nothing but a multitool. You’re stuck there for a week. Should you be more worried about finding a source of uncontaminated water or about a bear that might be in the area? Neither, says Les Stroud. The bear will most likely avoid you, and dehydration will affect you faster than parasites in untreated water. Your bigger worry should be shelter—the daytime might be nice, but it’s likely going to be cold at night. And that’s just the beginning. The concept of Survivorman is simple: left in a remote location, Les must survive for seven days on his own without food, water or equipment. Now, he shares his expert knowledge in Survive!, a fully illustrated guide based on his experiences on six continents and filled with field-tested advice. Many books on survival are culled from Second World War–era training techniques that are out-of-date or just plain wrong. Survive! debunks these dated myths, exploring basic and advanced tactics that show you how to cope in any survival situation. Brought to life with Les’s own anecdotes and the tales of others, Survive! is the perfect manual for anyone -- from beginner to armchair traveller to seasoned explorer -- who wants to meet nature’s dangers with confidence. As Les writes, “If you believe you can make it through the bad times, and you are not intimidated by the forces of nature, you will markedly increase your chances of survival.” SURVIVE! includes detailed information on the following: preparing for survival, mentally and physically fire-making techniques basic survival kit components finding, collecting and making water sources of food types of shelter

Book Dispatches from the Tenth Circle

Download or read book Dispatches from the Tenth Circle written by Robert Siegel and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2001 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Onion is laugh-out-loud, go-tell-your-friends, get-angry-you-didn't-think-of-it funny." -Conan O'Brien "Outside of maybe Dario Fo, an Italian who few are sure exists, the Onion people make the most consistently perfect and excoriating social commentary we currently have. But will those Nobel bastards honor them, too? Only God, our merciless and just God, knows." -Dave Eggers "The funniest publication in the United States." -The New Yorker "This publication is tasteless and destructive to our shared values. Read it for yourself and you'll see what I mean. Seriously, what else could make me laugh-much less laugh uproariously-while being offended week after week after week?" -Al Gore "The Onion is the funniest thing in news since Dan Rather's spooky stare." -Matt Groening "Brutal satire that rushes into the far reaches of race, class, sexuality, and culture where many publications-and critics-fear to tread." -Chicago Tribune "The Onion, unlike any other entity in our media culture, offers a refreshingly honest look at our complicated life." -Ken Burns

Book Dispatches

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Herr
  • Publisher : Vintage
  • Release : 2011-11-30
  • ISBN : 0307814165
  • Pages : 274 pages

Download or read book Dispatches written by Michael Herr and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

Book The Line Becomes a River

Download or read book The Line Becomes a River written by Francisco Cantú and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POST WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN CURRENT INTEREST FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NONFICTION AWARD The instant New York Times bestseller, "A must-read for anyone who thinks 'build a wall' is the answer to anything." --Esquire For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.

Book Let s Go Swimming on Doomsday

Download or read book Let s Go Swimming on Doomsday written by Natalie C. Anderson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forced to become a child soldier, a sixteen-year-old Somali refugee must confront his painful past in this haunting, thrilling tale of loss and redemption by the bestselling author of City of Saints & Thieves. Now in paperback. When Abdi's family is kidnapped, he's forced to do the unthinkable: become a child soldier in the ruthless jihadi group Al Shabaab. To save the lives of those he loves and earn their freedom, Abdi agrees to be embedded as a spy within the jihadi group's ranks, sending dispatches on their plans to the Americans. But it's a dangerous role and if Abdi's duplicity is discovered, he will be killed. For weeks, Abdi trains with the jihadi group, witnessing atrocity after atrocity. But after being forced into a suicide bomber's vest, Abdi finally escapes to Sangui City, Kenya. Homeless and shell-shocked, Abdi is picked up for a petty theft, setting into motion a chain reaction that forces him to reckon with a past he's desperate to forget. In this riveting, unflinching tale of sacrifice and hope, critically-acclaimed author Natalie C. Anderson delivers another tour-de-force that will leave readers at the edge of their seats.

Book Little Panic

Download or read book Little Panic written by Amanda Stern and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-19 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of bestselling memoirs about mental illness like Andrew Solomon's Noonday Demon, Sarah Hepola's Blackout, and Daniel Smith's Monkey Mind comes a gorgeously immersive, immediately relatable, and brilliantly funny memoir about living life on the razor's edge of panic. The world never made any sense to Amanda Stern--how could she trust time to keep flowing, the sun to rise, gravity to hold her feet to the ground, or even her own body to work the way it was supposed to? Deep down, she knows that there's something horribly wrong with her, some defect that her siblings and friends don't have to cope with. Growing up in the 1970s and 80s in New York, Amanda experiences the magic and madness of life through the filter of unrelenting panic. Plagued with fear that her friends and family will be taken from her if she's not watching-that her mother will die, or forget she has children and just move away-Amanda treats every parting as her last. Shuttled between a barefoot bohemian life with her mother in Greenwich Village, and a sanitized, stricter world of affluence uptown with her father, Amanda has little she can depend on. And when Etan Patz disappears down the block from their MacDougal Street home, she can't help but believe that all her worst fears are about to come true. Tenderly delivered and expertly structured, Amanda Stern's memoir is a document of the transformation of New York City and a deep, personal, and comedic account of the trials and errors of seeing life through a very unusual lens.

Book In Extremis

Download or read book In Extremis written by Lindsey Hilsum and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Finalist for the Costa Biography Award and long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Named a Best Book of 2018 by Esquire and Foreign Policy. An Amazon Best Book of November, the Guardian Bookshop Book of November, and one of the Evening Standard's Books to Read in November "Now, thanks to Hilsum’s deeply reported and passionately written book, [Marie Colvin] has the full accounting that she deserves." --Joshua Hammer, The New York Times The inspiring and devastating biography of Marie Colvin, the foremost war reporter of her generation, who was killed in Syria in 2012, and whose life story also forms the basis of the feature film A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as Colvin. When Marie Colvin was killed in an artillery attack in Homs, Syria, in 2012, at age fifty-six, the world lost a fearless and iconoclastic war correspondent who covered the most significant global calamities of her lifetime. In Extremis, written by her fellow reporter Lindsey Hilsum, is a thrilling investigation into Colvin’s epic life and tragic death based on exclusive access to her intimate diaries from age thirteen to her death, interviews with people from every corner of her life, and impeccable research. After growing up in a middle-class Catholic family on Long Island, Colvin studied with the legendary journalist John Hersey at Yale, and eventually started working for The Sunday Times of London, where she gained a reputation for bravery and compassion as she told the stories of victims of the major conflicts of our time. She lost sight in one eye while in Sri Lanka covering the civil war, interviewed Gaddafi and Arafat many times, and repeatedly risked her life covering conflicts in Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, and the Middle East. Colvin lived her personal life in extremis, too: bold, driven, and complex, she was married twice, took many lovers, drank and smoked, and rejected society’s expectations for women. Despite PTSD, she refused to give up reporting. Like her hero Martha Gellhorn, Colvin was committed to bearing witness to the horrifying truths of war, and to shining a light on the profound suffering of ordinary people caught in the midst of conflict. Lindsey Hilsum’s In Extremis is a devastating and revelatory biography of one of the greatest war correspondents of her generation.

Book Dispatches from Dystopia

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kate Brown
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2015-05-01
  • ISBN : 022624282X
  • Pages : 205 pages

Download or read book Dispatches from Dystopia written by Kate Brown and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Why are Kazakhstan and Montana the same place?” asks one chapter of Kate Brown’s surprising and unusual journey into the histories of places on the margins, overlooked or erased. It turns out that a ruined mining town in Kazakhstan and Butte, Montana—America’s largest environmental Superfund site—have much more in common than one would think thanks to similarities in climate, hucksterism, and the perseverance of their few hardy inhabitants. Taking readers to these and other unlikely locales, Dispatches from Dystopia delves into the very human and sometimes very fraught ways we come to understand a particular place, its people, and its history. In Dispatches from Dystopia, Brown wanders the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation, first on the Internet and then in person, to figure out which version—the real or the virtual—is the actual forgery. She also takes us to the basement of a hotel in Seattle to examine the personal possessions left in storage by Japanese-Americans on their way to internment camps in 1942. In Uman, Ukraine, we hide with Brown in a tree in order to witness the annual male-only Rosh Hashanah celebration of Hasidic Jews. In the Russian southern Urals, she speaks with the citizens of the small city of Kyshtym, where invisible radioactive pollutants have mysteriously blighted lives. Finally, Brown returns home to Elgin, Illinois, in the midwestern industrial rust belt to investigate the rise of “rustalgia” and the ways her formative experiences have inspired her obsession with modernist wastelands. Dispatches from Dystopia powerfully and movingly narrates the histories of locales that have been silenced, broken, or contaminated. In telling these previously unknown stories, Brown examines the making and unmaking of place, and the lives of the people who remain in the fragile landscapes that are left behind.