Download or read book Until Proven Safe written by Nicola Twilley and published by MCD. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley have been researching quarantine since long before the COVID-19 pandemic. With Until Proven Safe, they bring us a book as compelling as it is definitive, not only urgent reading for social-distanced times but also an up-to-the-minute investigation of the interplay of forces–––biological, political, technological––that shape our modern world. Quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt. In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. Until Proven Safe tracks the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space—from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean, built to contain the Black Death, to an experimental Ebola unit in London, and from the hallways of the CDC to closed-door simulations where pharmaceutical execs and epidemiologists prepare for the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. But the story of quarantine ranges far beyond the history of medical isolation. In Until Proven Safe, the authors tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world’s wheat supply, and meet NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections. They also introduce us to the corporate tech giants hoping to revolutionize quarantine through surveillance and algorithmic prediction. We live in a disorienting historical moment that can feel both unprecedented and inevitable; Until Proven Safe helps us make sense of our new reality through a thrillingly reported, thought-provoking exploration of the meaning of freedom, governance, and mutual responsibility.

Download or read book Eightysomethings written by Katharine Esty and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **Winner of the American Book Fest Best Book Award in "Health: Aging/50+"** This invaluable guide will help the historical number of eightysomethings live fulfilled, happy lives long into their twilight years. Personal stories illustrate how real people in their eighties are living and how they make sense of their lives. Old age is not what it used to be. For the first time ever, most people in the United States are living into their eighties. The first guide of its kind, Eightysomethings changes our understanding of old age with an upbeat and emotionally savvy view of the uncharted territory of the last stage of life. With insight and humor, Dr. Katharine Esty describes the series of dramatic and difficult transitions that eightysomethings usually experience and how, despite their losses, they so often find themselves unexpectedly happy. Living into one’s eighties doesn’t have to mean declining health and loneliness: Dr. Esty shows readers how to embrace—and thrive during—the later stages of life. Based on her more than 120 interviews around the country, Esty explores the lives of ordinary eightysomethings—their attitudes, activities, secrets, worries, purposes, and joys. Esty adds her wisdom and perspective to this multi-dimensional look at being old as a social psychologist, a practicing psychotherapist, and as an eighty-four-year-old widow living in a retirement community. Eightysomethings is a must-read for people in their eighties, and also for their families. Adult children—often bewildered by their aging parents—need a wise guide like Eightysomethings to help them navigate their parents’ last stage of life with real-world guidelines and conversation starters. Readers, young and old alike, will find this first-of-its-kind book eye-opening, comforting, and filled with practical tips.

Download or read book Disability Visibility written by Alice Wong and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Disability rights activist Alice Wong brings tough conversations to the forefront of society with this anthology. It sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences. It's an eye-opening collection that readers will revisit time and time again.” —Chicago Tribune One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.

Download or read book Please Don t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes written by Phoebe Robinson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER, NOW IN PAPERBACK “Another hilarious essay collection from Phoebe Robinson.”—The New York Times Book Review “Strikes the perfect balance of brutally honest and laugh-out-loud funny. I didn’t want it to end.”—Mindy Kaling, New York Times bestselling author of Why Not Me? With sharp, timely insight, pitch-perfect pop culture references, and her always unforgettable voice, New York Times bestselling author, comedian, actress, and producer Phoebe Robinson is back with her most must-read book yet. In her brand-new collection, Phoebe shares stories that will make you laugh, but also plenty that will hit you in the heart and inspire a little bit of rage, and maybe a lot of action. That means revealing her perspective on performative allyship, white guilt, and what happens when white people take up space in cultural movements; exploring what it’s like to be a woman who doesn’t want kids living in a society where motherhood is the crowning achievement of a straight, cis woman’s life; and discussing how the dire state of mental health in America means that taking care of one’s psychological well-being—aka “self-care”—usually requires disposable money. She also shares tales of her mom slowpoking before a visit with Mrs. Obama, the stupidly fake reassurances of zip-line attendants, her favorite things about dating a white person from the UK, and how the lack of Black women in leadership positions fueled her to become the Black lady-boss of her dreams. By turns perceptive, hilarious, and heartfelt, Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes is not only a brilliant look at our current cultural moment, it's also a collection that will stay with readers for years to come.

Download or read book The Girl s Guide written by Melissa Kirsch and published by Workman Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A colossal cheat sheet for your post-college years, answering all the needs of the modern woman—from mastering money to placating overly anxious parents, from social media etiquette to the pleasure and pain of dating (and why it’s not a cliché to love yourself first). A perfect combination of tried-and-true advice and been-there tips, it’s a one-stop resource that includes how to clean up your digital reputation, info on finding an apartment you can afford and actually want to live in, and why you should exercise the delicate art of defriending. Plus the fundamentals, from health (mental and physical) to spirituality to ethics to fashion, all delivered in Melissa Kirsch’s fresh, personal, funny voice—as if your best friend were giving you the best and smartest advice in the world.

Download or read book Love and Other Poems written by Alex Dimitrov and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alex Dimitrov’s third book, Love and Other Poems, is full of praise for the world we live in. Taking time as an overarching structure—specifically, the twelve months of the year—Dimitrov elevates the everyday, and speaks directly to the reader as if the poem were a phone call or a text message. From the personal to the cosmos, the moon to New York City, the speaker is convinced that love is “our best invention.” Dimitrov doesn’t resist joy, even in despair. These poems are curious about who we are as people and shamelessly interested in hope.

Download or read book Fire with Fire written by Destiny Soria and published by HMH Books For Young Readers. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised to be fierce dragon slayers, two sisters end up on opposite sides of the impending war when one sister forms an unlikely, magical bond with a dragon in this standalone YA contemporary fantasy that's perfect for fans of Slayer and Sorcery of Thorns. Dani and Eden Rivera were both born to kill dragons, but the sisters couldn't be more different. For Dani, dragon slaying takes a back seat to normal high school life, while Eden prioritizes training above everything else. Yet they both agree on one thing: it's kill or be killed where dragons are concerned. Until Dani comes face-to-face with one and forges a rare and magical bond with him. As she gets to know Nox, she realizes that everything she thought she knew about dragons is wrong. With Dani lost to the dragons, Eden turns to mysterious and alluring sorcerers to help save her sister. Now on opposite sides of the conflict, each sister will do whatever it takes to save the other. But the two are playing with magic that is more dangerous than they know, and there is another, more powerful enemy waiting for them both in the shadows.

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 Quarantine written by Gay Courter and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when you find yourself at the epicenter of a global crisis over a contagious new virus? Bestselling writer Gay Courter and her filmmaker husband learned the answer to that question in early February 2020, just as they were about to disembark from the Diamond Princess in Tokyo after a dazzling two-week southeast Asian cruise. Weeks before lockdowns and social distancing became the new normal, the Courters and their shipmates suddenly found themselves trapped in a posh penitentiary—courtesy of the Japanese Ministry of Health. Confined to their cabin and its balcony, they watched in terror as more and more sick and contagious passengers were loaded into ambulances and the world’s press swarmed the port. Rather than passively endure their nightmare-come-true, they launched a campaign to get themselves and everyone else off the ship. With the help of the global media and some well-placed connections, they managed to influence high-ranking U.S.government officials—right up to and including the White House—to bring everyone home to safety. Quarantine! is the insider’s book on the Diamond Princess episode, a suspenseful real-life drama recounting Gay and Phil’s twelve-day ordeal aboard ship, their tenacious efforts to get the U.S.government to repatriate them and other Americans, and their additional fifteen-day quarantine under federal order behind chain-link fencing at the pointedly less-than-posh Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The COVID-19 crisis has affected the entire world. In her inimitable, long-admired voice, Gay Courter tells how it feels to wonder if you will be the next victim. See quarantinediamondprincess.com for updates about the book and Phil Courter’s forthcoming documentary, Quarantine! How We Survived the Diamond Princess Coronavirus Crisis.

Download or read book An Illustrated Journey written by Danny Gregory and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects excerpts from the personal travel journal sketchbooks of forty-three artists, illustrators, and designers.

Download or read book Wuhan Diary written by Fang Fang and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-05-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak. On January 25, 2020, after the central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang began publishing an online diary. In the days and weeks that followed, Fang Fang’s nightly postings gave voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of her fellow citizens, reflecting on the psychological impact of forced isolation, the role of the internet as both community lifeline and source of misinformation, and most tragically, the lives of neighbors and friends taken by the deadly virus. A fascinating eyewitness account of events as they unfold, Wuhan Diary captures the challenges of daily life and the changing moods and emotions of being quarantined without reliable information. Fang Fang finds solace in small domestic comforts and is inspired by the courage of friends, health professionals and volunteers, as well as the resilience and perseverance of Wuhan’s nine million residents. But, by claiming the writer ́s duty to record she also speaks out against social injustice, abuse of power, and other problems which impeded the response to the epidemic and gets herself embroiled in online controversies because of it. As Fang Fang documents the beginning of the global health crisis in real time, we are able to identify patterns and mistakes that many of the countries dealing with the novel coronavirus have later repeated. She reminds us that, in the face of the new virus, the plight of the citizens of Wuhan is also that of citizens everywhere. As Fang Fang writes: “The virus is the common enemy of humankind; that is a lesson for all humanity. The only way we can conquer this virus and free ourselves from its grip is for all members of humankind to work together.” Blending the intimate and the epic, the profound and the quotidian, Wuhan Diary is a remarkable record of an extraordinary time. Translated from the Chinese by Michael Berry

Download or read book This Will All Be Over Soon written by Cecily Strong and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful memoir from the Saturday Night Live cast member Cecily Strong about grieving the death of her cousin—and embracing the life-affirming lessons he taught her—amid the coronavirus pandemic. Cecily Strong had a special bond with her cousin Owen. And so she was devastated when, in early 2020, he passed away at age thirty from the brain cancer glioblastoma. Before Strong could attempt to process her grief, another tragedy struck: the coronavirus pandemic. Following a few harrowing weeks in the virus epicenter of New York City, Strong relocated to an isolated house in the woods upstate. Here, trying to make sense of Owen’s death and the upended world, she spent much of the ensuing months writing. The result is This Will All Be Over Soon—a raw, unflinching memoir about loss, love, laughter, and hope. Befitting the time-warped year of 2020, the diary-like approach deftly weaves together the present and the past. Strong chronicles the challenges of beginning a relationship during the pandemic and the fear when her new boyfriend contracts COVID. She describes the pain of losing her friend and longtime Saturday Night Live staff member Hal Willner to the virus. She reflects on formative events from her life, including how her high school expulsion led to her pursuing a career in theater and, years later, landing at SNL. Yet the heart of the book is Owen. Strong offers a poignant account of her cousin’s life, both before and after his diagnosis. Inspired by his unshakable positivity and the valuable lessons he taught her, she has written a book that—as indicated by its title—serves as a moving reminder: whatever challenges life might throw one’s way, they will be over soon. And so will life. So make sure to appreciate every day and don’t take a second of it for granted.

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 Cracker Queen written by Lauretta Hannon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-04-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poignant memoir of life on the wrong side of the tracks-which was a SIBA bestseller in hardcover-with a colorful cast of misfits, plenty of belly laughs, and lessons for finding joy in spite of hardship Move over, Sweet Potato Queens. Thanks to Lauretta Hannon, the Cracker Queens are finally having their say. From her wildly popular NPR segments to her colorful one-woman show, Hannon is showing the world a different kind of Southern girl-a strong, authentic, fearless, flawed, resourceful, and sometimes outrageous woman-the anti-Southern Belle. The Cracker Queen takes readers from backwater Georgia to Savannah's most eccentric neighborhoods for a wild ride featuring a distinctly dysfunctional family and a lively crew of hellions, heroines, bad seeds, and renegades. Full of warmth, outrageous wit, and world-class storytelling, The Cracker Queen is a celebration of living out loud, finding humor in desperate situations, and loving life to death.

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 Forget Prayers Bring Cake written by Merissa Nathan Gerson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though at times it may seem impossible, we can heal with help from our friends and community– if we know how to ask. This heartrending, relatable account of one woman’s reckoning with loss is a guide to the world of self-recovery, self-love, and the skills necessary to meeting one's own needs in these times of pain– especially when that pain is suffered alone. Grief is all around us. In the world of today it has become common and layered, no longer only an occasional weight. A book needed now more than ever, Forget Prayers, Bring Cake is for people of all ages and orientations dealing with grief of any sort—professional, personal, romantic, familial, or even the sadness of the modern day. This book provides actions to boost self-care and self-worth; it shows when and how to ask for love and attention, and how to provide it for others. It shows that it is okay to define your needs and ask others to share theirs. In a moment in which community, affection, and generosity are needed more than ever, this book is an indispensable road map. This book will be a guiding light to a healthier mental state amid these troubled times.

Download or read book Embassy Wife written by Katie Crouch and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A smart, sparkling novel that is one part social satire, one part travelogue . . . Comical and cool.” —Oprah Daily In Katie Crouch's thrilling novel Embassy Wife, two women abroad search for the truth about their husbands—and their country. Meet Persephone Wilder, a displaced genius posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia. Persephone takes her job as a representative of her country seriously, coming up with an intricate set of rules to survive the problems she encounters: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too much skin, how not to look drunk at embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace. She also suspects her husband is not actually the ambassador’s legal counsel but a secret agent in the CIA. The consummate embassy wife, she takes the newest trailing spouse, Amanda Evans, under her wing. Amanda arrives in Namibia mere weeks after giving up her Silicon Valley job so her husband, Mark, can have his family close by as he works on his Fulbright project. But once they’re settled in the sub-Saharan desert, Amanda sees clearly that Mark, who lived in Namibia two decades earlier, has other reasons for returning. Back in the safety of home, the marriage had seemed solid; in the glaring heat of the Kalahari, it feels tenuous. And the situation grows even more fraught when their daughter becomes involved in an international conflict and their own government won’t stand up for her. How far will Amanda go to keep her family intact? How much corruption can Persephone ignore? And what, exactly, does it mean to be an American abroad when you’re not sure you understand your country anymore? Propulsive and provocative, Embassy Wife asks what it means to be a human in this world, even as it helps us laugh in the face of our own absurd, seemingly impossible states of affairs.