Download or read book Man of My Time written by Dalia Sofer and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. "Finely wrought, a master class in the layering of time and contradiction that gives us a deeply imagined, and deeply human, soul." --Rebecca Makkai, The New York Times Book Review From the bestselling author of The Septembers of Shiraz, the story of an Iranian man reckoning with his capacity for love and evil Set in Iran and New York City, Man of My Time tells the story of Hamid Mozaffarian, who is as alienated from himself as he is from the world around him. After decades of ambivalent work as an interrogator with the Iranian regime, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father, whose dying wish was to be buried in Iran. Tucked in his pocket throughout the trip, the ashes propel him into a first-person excavation—full of mordant wit and bitter memory—of a lifetime of betrayal, and prompt him to trace his own evolution from a perceptive boy in love with marbles to a man who, on seeing his own reflection, is startled to encounter someone he no longer recognizes. As he reconnects with his brother and others living in exile, Hamid is forced to reckon with his past, with the insidious nature of violence, and with his entrenchment in a system that for decades ensnared him. Politically complex and emotionally compelling, Man of My Time explores variations of loss—of people, places, ideals, time, and self. This is a novel not only about family and memory but about the interdependence of captor and captive, of citizen and country, of an individual and his or her heritage. With sensitivity and strength, Dalia Sofer conjures the interior lives of the “generation that had borne and inflicted what could not be undone.”
Download or read book Henry David Thoreau written by Henry David Thoreau and published by Viking Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 1967 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected writings from the influential and inspirational essays of an early American transcendentalist, poet, and independent thinker.
Download or read book Part of Our Time written by Murray Kempton and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through brilliant portraits of real persons who created the myths and realities of the 1930s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Kempton brings that turbulent decade to life. Himself a child of the time, Kempton examines with the insight and imagination of a novelist the men and women who embraced, grappled with, and in many cases were destroyed by the myth of revolution. What he calls the “ruins and monuments of the Thirties” include Paul Robeson, Alger Hiss, and Whittaker Chambers, the Hollywood Ten, the rebel women Elizabeth Bentley and Mary Heaton Vorse, and the labor leaders Walter Reuther and Joe Curran.
Download or read book Orwell written by Richard Bradford and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid portrait of the man behind the writings, placing Orwell and his work at the centre of the current political landscape. One of the most enduringly popular and controversial writers of the twentieth century, George Orwell's work is as relevant today as it was in his own lifetime. Possibly, in the age of Brexit, Trump, and populism, even more so. 'Doublethink' features in Nineteen Eighty-Four and it is the forerunner to 'Fake News'. He foresaw the creation of the EU and more significantly he predicted that post-Imperial xenophobia would cause Britain to leave it. His struggle with his own antisemitism could serve as a lesson to today's Labour Party, and, while the Soviet Union is gone, China has taken its place as a totalitarian superpower. Aside from his importance as a political theorist and novelist, Orwell's life is fascinating in its own right. Caught between uncertainty and his family's upper middle-class complacency, Orwell grew to despise the class system that spawned him despite finding himself unable to fully detach himself from it. His life thereafter mirrored the history of his country; like many from his background, he devoted himself to socialism as a salve to his conscience. In truth he reserved as much suspicion and distaste for the 'proles' as he did pity. He died at the point when Britain's status as an Imperial and world power had waned, but his work remains both prescient and significant.
Download or read book Our Time written by Josh Seefried and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Time marks the end of more than a decade of silence, giving voice to the LGBT men and women who served under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” These individuals enlisted knowing that the military would ask them to bury an integral part of themselves and yet joined because of their deep belief that the values of the military were worth the tremendous sacrifice. Our Time shares their stories for the first time, revealing an intimate portrait of military life. Edited by air force officer Josh Seefried, a cofounder of the LGBT active duty military association OutServe, Our Time is a collection of remarkable depth and diversity. We witness the abuse—physical and mental—endured at the hands of fellow soldiers and superiors. We see the hardships faced by their families and partners and feel the pain of the choice between military and self. There are also examples of humanity at its very best: leaders with the courage to support their comrades in the face of tremendous pressure, friendships forged and minds opened, and love that endures the very toughest of odds. Throughout we are reminded of the bravery and selflessness of the men and women who chose to serve our country and defend our liberties while their own freedom was withheld. At once a testament to the wrongs of the policy and a celebration of the good that endured in spite of it, Our Time marks the start of a new era in our national history
Download or read book Socrates written by Paul Johnson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-11-27 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Spectacular . . . A delight to read.” —The Wall Street Journal From bestselling biographer and historian Paul Johnson, a brilliant portrait of Socrates, the founding father of philosophy In his highly acclaimed style, historian Paul Johnson masterfully disentangles centuries of scarce sources to offer a riveting account of Socrates, who is often hailed as the most important thinker of all time. Johnson provides a compelling picture of Athens in the fifth century BCE, and of the people Socrates reciprocally delighted in, as well as many enlightening and intimate analyses of specific aspects of his personality. Enchantingly portraying "the sheer power of Socrates's mind, and its unique combination of steel, subtlety, and frivolity," Paul Johnson captures the vast and intriguing life of a man who did nothing less than supply the basic apparatus of the human mind.
Download or read book Citizen Cash written by Michael Stewart Foley and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading historian argues that Johnny Cash was the most important political artist of his time Johnny Cash was an American icon, known for his level, bass-baritone voice and somber demeanor, and for huge hits like “Ring of Fire” and “I Walk the Line.” But he was also the most prominent political artist in the United States, even if he wasn’t recognized for it in his own lifetime, or since his death in 2003. Then and now, people have misread Cash’s politics, usually accepting the idea of him as a “walking contradiction.” Cash didn’t fit into easy political categories—liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, hawk or dove. Like most people, Cash’s politics were remarkably consistent in that they were based not on ideology or scripts but on empathy—emotion, instinct, and identification. Drawing on untapped archives and new research on social movements and grassroots activism, Citizen Cash offers a major reassessment of a legendary figure.
Download or read book Nick of Time written by Tim Downs and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bug Man is getting married on Saturday . . . if his fiancΘe can find him. Forensic entomologist Nick Polchak lives in a world of maggots and blow flies and decomposing bodies. No wonder he's still single. But Nick has finally found a woman as strange as he isùdog trainer Alena Savard, a woman who is odd, reclusive, and can seemingly talk to animals. It was a match made in heaven. Nick and Alena are scheduled to be married on Saturdayùbut there's one small problem. Nick has disappeared. Caught up in a murder case involving an old friend, Nick finds himself on a manhunt that's drawing him farther and farther from the church where Alena is waiting. But will he make it back in time? Could Nick's single-minded focus cause him to forget his own wedding? Is he really pursuing a killer, or is he running away from something else?
Download or read book The World s Fastest Man written by Michael Kranish and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of The Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figure—the remarkable Major Taylor, the black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the world’s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era. In the 1890s, the nation’s promise of equality had failed spectacularly. While slavery had ended with the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws still separated blacks from whites, and the excesses of the Gilded Age created an elite upper class. Amidst this world arrived Major Taylor, a young black man who wanted to compete in the nation’s most popular and mostly white man’s sport, cycling. Birdie Munger, a white cyclist who once was the world’s fastest man, declared that he could help turn the young black athlete into a champion. Twelve years before boxer Jack Johnson and fifty years before baseball player Jackie Robinson, Taylor faced racism at nearly every turn—especially by whites who feared he would disprove their stereotypes of blacks. In The World’s Fastest Man, years in the writing, investigative journalist Michael Kranish reveals new information about Major Taylor based on a rare interview with his daughter and other never-before-uncovered details from Taylor’s life. Kranish shows how Taylor indeed became a world champion, traveled the world, was the toast of Paris, and was one of the most chronicled black men of his day. From a moment in time just before the arrival of the automobile when bicycles were king, the populace was booming with immigrants, and enormous societal changes were about to take place, The World’s Fastest Man shines a light on a dramatic moment in American history—the gateway to the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Great Mental Models Volume 1 written by Shane Parrish and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.
Download or read book Our Time Is Now written by Stacey Abrams and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author of Lead From The Outside and political leader Stacey Abrams, a blueprint to end voter suppression, empower our citizens, and take back our country. "With each page, she inspires and empowers us to create systems that reflect a world in which all voices are heard and all people believe and feel that they matter." —Kerry Washington A recognized expert on fair voting and civic engagement, Abrams chronicles a chilling account of how the right to vote and the principle of democracy have been and continue to be under attack. Abrams would have been the first African American woman governor, but experienced these effects firsthand, despite running the most innovative race in modern politics as the Democratic nominee in Georgia. Abrams didn’t win, but she has not conceded. The book compellingly argues for the importance of robust voter protections, an elevation of identity politics, engagement in the census, and a return to moral international leadership. Our Time Is Now draws on extensive research from national organizations and renowned scholars, as well as anecdotes from her life and others’ who have fought throughout our country’s history for the power to be heard. The stakes could not be higher. Here are concrete solutions and inspiration to stand up for who we are?now. "This is a narrative that describes the urgency that compels me and millions more to push for a different American story than the one being told today. It's a story that is one part danger, one part action, and all true. It's a story about how and why we fight for our democracy and win." - Stacey Abrams
Download or read book A Time of Gifts written by Patrick Leigh Fermor and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-09-14 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beloved account about an intrepid young Englishman on the first leg of his walk from London to Constantinople is simply one of the best works of travel literature ever written. At the age of eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off from the heart of London on an epic journey—to walk to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the rich account of his adventures as far as Hungary, after which Between the Woods and the Water continues the story to the Iron Gates that divide the Carpathian and Balkan mountains. Acclaimed for its sweep and intelligence, Leigh Fermor’s book explores a remarkable moment in time. Hitler has just come to power but war is still ahead, as he walks through a Europe soon to be forever changed—through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire; up the Rhine, and down to the Danube. At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come.
Download or read book Fear Itself The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time written by Ira Katznelson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-03 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the New Deal era highlights the politicians and pundits of the time, many of whom advocated for questionable positions, including separation of the races and an American dictatorship.
Download or read book The Time of Our Time written by Norman Mailer and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 1286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE TIME OF OUR TIME is a selection of Mailer's best work, chosen by Mailer himself, and ingeniously arranged as a literary retrospective. It is a masterly, boisterous portrait of our times, seen through the fiction and reportage of a great writer. Included are passages from THE NAKED AND THE DEAD, THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT and THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG, as well as many of his other works and his best-known magazine pieces from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna. This giant omnibus is a testament to Mailer's enormous energies, his vast curiosity, and his amazing talent and amounts almost to a self-chosen literary 'autobiography'.
Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
Download or read book Four Thousand Weeks written by Oliver Burkeman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.
Download or read book Your Time Is Now written by Jonathan Evans and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God has a purpose for you right now. You may think you're not ready to make a difference in God's Kingdom or that you're too young for others to take seriously. But that's not what God thinks. At some point, you have to understand your own purpose and significance in the kingdom of God. How does God want to use you? This book uses the Old Testament leader Joshua as a model for stepping up to God's big calling. Before Joshua, Moses was the one who had spoken to God, performed miracles, and challenged Pharaoh. But at some point, Joshua had to come out to the front. So what did he do? How did he step up? And what steps can you take to seize "now" for yourself? Now is your time. If you will be steadfast and unmovable, and always abound in what God is calling you to do, you'll see that it will not be in vain. He has a plan, a destiny for your life. Now means "not later." Now means "don't wait." God wants to do great things.
