The remarkable story of a small, makeshift library in the town of Daraya, and the people who found hope and humanity in its books during a four-year siege.Daraya lies on the fringe of Damascus, just southwest of the Syrian capital. Yet for four years it lived in another world. Besieged by government forces early in the Syrian Civil War, its people were deprived of food, bombarded by heavy artillery, and under the constant fire of snipers. But deep beneath this scene of frightening devastation lay a hidden library. While the streets above echoed with shelling and rifle fire, the secret world below was a haven of books.Long rows of well-thumbed volumes lined almost every wall: bloated editions with grand leather covers, pocket-sized guides to Syrian poetry, and no-nonsense reference books, all arranged in well-ordered lines. But this precious horde was not bought from publishers or loaned by other libraries--they were the books salvaged and scavenged at great personal risk from the doomed city above.The story of this extraordinary place and the people who found purpose and refuge in it is one of hope, human resilience, and above all, the timeless, universal love of literature and the compassion and wisdom it fosters.
PublicAffairs
|
9781541767621
|
Hardcover
What's Your Zip Code Story?
By Gross, C J
Shedding light on class division, this book offers solutions to class bias in the workplace by analyzing real experiences, social norms, education, wealth, and more.The renewed focus on class, race and equality in the workplace and beyond is making an indelible mark on society. This clarion call for change is sweeping inequality from every corner of the nation, including law enforcement, schools, and businesses. And within the past five years, diversity and inclusion, as well as unconscious bias, have been the main drivers of organizational training, politics, and community engagement. What's Your Zip Code Story helps clarify the intersection of class bias and racial disparity in the workplace and arms organizations with the knowledge to not only have productive discussions, but also adopt effective solutions.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
|
9781538160589
|
Hardcover
You're Paid What You're Worth
By Rosenfeld, Jake
Your pay depends on your productivity and occupation. If you earn roughly the same as others in your job, with the precise level determined by your performance, then you're paid market value. And who can question something as objective and impersonal as the market? That, at least, is how many of us tend to think. But according to Jake Rosenfeld, we need to think again.Job performance and occupational characteristics do play a role in determining pay, but judgments of productivity and value are also highly subjective. What makes a lawyer more valuable than a teacher? How do you measure the output of a police officer, a professor, or a reporter? Why, in the past few decades, did CEOs suddenly become hundreds of times more valuable than their employees? The answers lie not in objective criteria but in battles over interests and ideals.
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
|
9780674916593
|
Hardcover
Harold Innis's history of communications paper and printing - antiquity to early modernity
By Buxton, William
For decades, media historians have heard of Harold Innis s unpublished manuscript exploring the history of communications but very few have had an opportunity to see it. In this volume, editors and Innis scholars William J. Buxton, Michael R. Cheney, and Paul Heyer make widely accessible, for the first time, three core chapters from the legendary Innis manuscript. Here, Innis (1894-1952) examines the development of paper and printing from antiquity in Asia through to 16th century Europe. He demonstrates how the paper/printing nexus intersected with a broad range of other phenomena, including administrative structures, geopolitics, militarism, public opinion, aesthetics, cultural diffusion, religion, education, reception, production processes, technology, labor relations, and commerce, as well as the lives of visionary figures.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
|
9781442243385
|
Print book
This Blessed Earth
By Genoways, Ted
Is there still a place for the farm in today's America?The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a small ranch, and for forty years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife's fifth-generation homestead in York County, Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their small family farm -- and their entire way of life -- are under siege. Rising corporate ownership of land and livestock is forcing small farmers to get bigger and bigger, assuming more debt and more risk. At the same time, after nearly a decade of record-high corn and soybean prices, the bottom has dropped out of the markets, making it ever harder for small farmers to shoulder their loans. All the while, the Hammonds are confronted by encroaching pipelines, groundwater depletion, climate change, and shifting trade policies. Far from an isolated refuge beyond the reach of global events, the family farm is increasingly at the crossroads of emerging technologies and international detente. Following the Hammonds from harvest to harvest, Ted Genoways explores this rapidly changing landscape of small, traditional farming operations, mapping as it unfolds day to day. This Blessed Earth is both a concise exploration of the history of the American small farm and a vivid, nuanced portrait of one family's fight to preserve their legacy and the life they love. 8 pages of illustrations
W. W. Norton & Company
|
9780393292572
|
Hardcover
Thunderstruck
By Larson, Erik
A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world's "great hush."In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men - Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication - whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, "the kindest of men," nearly commits the perfect murder.With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate.
Crown; 1 edition
|
9781400080663
|
Hardcover
Fuzz
By Roach, Mary
One of Bookpage's Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2021 Join "America's funniest science writer" (Peter Carlson, Washington Post) , Mary Roach, on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet.What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A grizzly bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? As New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.Roach tags along with animal attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller-blasters. She travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St.
W. W. Norton & Company
|
9781324001935
|
Hardcover
How to Astronaut
By Virts, Terry
A wildly entertaining account of the rules, lessons, procedures, and experiences of space travel, How to Astronaut is a book that will appeal to anyone - male or female, young or old - with even a passing interest in space. Written by Col. Terry Virts, a former astronaut, space shuttle pilot, and International Space Station commander who spent 200 consecutive days in space, it answers all of our curious questions and much more: Here's how to survive that first brush with weightlessness (in the so-called vomit comet) ; the nearly indescribable thrill of a first blastoff; managing the daily tasks - eating, bathing, doing chores, going to the bathroom - that are anything but ordinary when you're orbiting the earth at 17,000 miles per hour; how to don your space suit and head out to work on a spacewalk ("alone in the vacuum") ; how to prepare for emergencies of all kinds, from managing "space brain" to dealing with a dead crew member; and what it's like to return to Earth, including something as seemingly simple as walking after spending six months in zero-g.
Workman Publishing Company
|
9781523509614
|
Hardcover
Stalking the Atomic City
By Kamysh, Markiyan
Like a real-life trainspotting, a rare portrait of the dystopian reality that is Chornobyl today and the people who call the Exclusion Zone their home.Since the Chornobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986, the area remains a toxic, forbidden wasteland. The zone has become a place for meditation at the edge of geography where you can lose yourself. As with all dangerous places, this terra incognita attracts a wild assortment of adventurers who climb over the barbed wire illegally to witness the aftermath of catastrophe in the flesh. Breaking the law here is a pilgrimage: a metamodern sacred experience that coexists with thrash.Markiyan Kamysh, whose father worked as an on-site disaster liquidator of Chornobyl, works as a "stalker," guiding people who dare to venture into the disaster area for thrills.
‎Astra House
|
9781662601279
|
Hardcover
Troubled Water
By Siegel, Seth M.
New York Times bestselling author Seth M. Siegel shows how our drinking water got contaminated, what it may be doing to us, and what we must do to make it safe. If you thought America's drinking water problems started and ended in Flint, Michigan, think again. From big cities and suburbs to the rural heartland, chemicals linked to cancer, heart disease, obesity, birth defects, and lowered IQ routinely spill from our taps. Many are to blame: the EPA, Congress, a bipartisan coalition of powerful governors and mayors, chemical companies, and drinking water utilities - even NASA and the Pentagon. Meanwhile, the bottled water industry has been fanning our fears about tap water, but bottled water is often no safer.The tragedy is that existing technologies could launch a new age of clean, healthy, and safe tap water for only a few dollars a week per person.
Syria's Secret Library
By Thomson, Mike
The remarkable story of a small, makeshift library in the town of Daraya, and the people who found hope and humanity in its books during a four-year siege.Daraya lies on the fringe of Damascus, just southwest of the Syrian capital. Yet for four years it lived in another world. Besieged by government forces early in the Syrian Civil War, its people were deprived of food, bombarded by heavy artillery, and under the constant fire of snipers. But deep beneath this scene of frightening devastation lay a hidden library. While the streets above echoed with shelling and rifle fire, the secret world below was a haven of books.Long rows of well-thumbed volumes lined almost every wall: bloated editions with grand leather covers, pocket-sized guides to Syrian poetry, and no-nonsense reference books, all arranged in well-ordered lines. But this precious horde was not bought from publishers or loaned by other libraries--they were the books salvaged and scavenged at great personal risk from the doomed city above.The story of this extraordinary place and the people who found purpose and refuge in it is one of hope, human resilience, and above all, the timeless, universal love of literature and the compassion and wisdom it fosters.
What's Your Zip Code Story?
By Gross, C J
Shedding light on class division, this book offers solutions to class bias in the workplace by analyzing real experiences, social norms, education, wealth, and more.The renewed focus on class, race and equality in the workplace and beyond is making an indelible mark on society. This clarion call for change is sweeping inequality from every corner of the nation, including law enforcement, schools, and businesses. And within the past five years, diversity and inclusion, as well as unconscious bias, have been the main drivers of organizational training, politics, and community engagement. What's Your Zip Code Story helps clarify the intersection of class bias and racial disparity in the workplace and arms organizations with the knowledge to not only have productive discussions, but also adopt effective solutions.
You're Paid What You're Worth
By Rosenfeld, Jake
Your pay depends on your productivity and occupation. If you earn roughly the same as others in your job, with the precise level determined by your performance, then you're paid market value. And who can question something as objective and impersonal as the market? That, at least, is how many of us tend to think. But according to Jake Rosenfeld, we need to think again.Job performance and occupational characteristics do play a role in determining pay, but judgments of productivity and value are also highly subjective. What makes a lawyer more valuable than a teacher? How do you measure the output of a police officer, a professor, or a reporter? Why, in the past few decades, did CEOs suddenly become hundreds of times more valuable than their employees? The answers lie not in objective criteria but in battles over interests and ideals.
Harold Innis's history of communications paper and printing - antiquity to early modernity
By Buxton, William
For decades, media historians have heard of Harold Innis s unpublished manuscript exploring the history of communications but very few have had an opportunity to see it. In this volume, editors and Innis scholars William J. Buxton, Michael R. Cheney, and Paul Heyer make widely accessible, for the first time, three core chapters from the legendary Innis manuscript. Here, Innis (1894-1952) examines the development of paper and printing from antiquity in Asia through to 16th century Europe. He demonstrates how the paper/printing nexus intersected with a broad range of other phenomena, including administrative structures, geopolitics, militarism, public opinion, aesthetics, cultural diffusion, religion, education, reception, production processes, technology, labor relations, and commerce, as well as the lives of visionary figures.
This Blessed Earth
By Genoways, Ted
Is there still a place for the farm in today's America?The family farm lies at the heart of our national identity, yet its future is in peril. Rick Hammond grew up on a small ranch, and for forty years he has raised cattle and crops on his wife's fifth-generation homestead in York County, Nebraska, in hopes of passing it on to their four children. But as the handoff nears, their small family farm -- and their entire way of life -- are under siege. Rising corporate ownership of land and livestock is forcing small farmers to get bigger and bigger, assuming more debt and more risk. At the same time, after nearly a decade of record-high corn and soybean prices, the bottom has dropped out of the markets, making it ever harder for small farmers to shoulder their loans. All the while, the Hammonds are confronted by encroaching pipelines, groundwater depletion, climate change, and shifting trade policies. Far from an isolated refuge beyond the reach of global events, the family farm is increasingly at the crossroads of emerging technologies and international detente. Following the Hammonds from harvest to harvest, Ted Genoways explores this rapidly changing landscape of small, traditional farming operations, mapping as it unfolds day to day. This Blessed Earth is both a concise exploration of the history of the American small farm and a vivid, nuanced portrait of one family's fight to preserve their legacy and the life they love. 8 pages of illustrations
Thunderstruck
By Larson, Erik
A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world's "great hush."In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men - Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication - whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, "the kindest of men," nearly commits the perfect murder.With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate.
Fuzz
By Roach, Mary
One of Bookpage's Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2021 Join "America's funniest science writer" (Peter Carlson, Washington Post) , Mary Roach, on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet.What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A grizzly bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? As New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.Roach tags along with animal attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller-blasters. She travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St.
How to Astronaut
By Virts, Terry
A wildly entertaining account of the rules, lessons, procedures, and experiences of space travel, How to Astronaut is a book that will appeal to anyone - male or female, young or old - with even a passing interest in space. Written by Col. Terry Virts, a former astronaut, space shuttle pilot, and International Space Station commander who spent 200 consecutive days in space, it answers all of our curious questions and much more: Here's how to survive that first brush with weightlessness (in the so-called vomit comet) ; the nearly indescribable thrill of a first blastoff; managing the daily tasks - eating, bathing, doing chores, going to the bathroom - that are anything but ordinary when you're orbiting the earth at 17,000 miles per hour; how to don your space suit and head out to work on a spacewalk ("alone in the vacuum") ; how to prepare for emergencies of all kinds, from managing "space brain" to dealing with a dead crew member; and what it's like to return to Earth, including something as seemingly simple as walking after spending six months in zero-g.
Stalking the Atomic City
By Kamysh, Markiyan
Like a real-life trainspotting, a rare portrait of the dystopian reality that is Chornobyl today and the people who call the Exclusion Zone their home.Since the Chornobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986, the area remains a toxic, forbidden wasteland. The zone has become a place for meditation at the edge of geography where you can lose yourself. As with all dangerous places, this terra incognita attracts a wild assortment of adventurers who climb over the barbed wire illegally to witness the aftermath of catastrophe in the flesh. Breaking the law here is a pilgrimage: a metamodern sacred experience that coexists with thrash.Markiyan Kamysh, whose father worked as an on-site disaster liquidator of Chornobyl, works as a "stalker," guiding people who dare to venture into the disaster area for thrills.
Troubled Water
By Siegel, Seth M.
New York Times bestselling author Seth M. Siegel shows how our drinking water got contaminated, what it may be doing to us, and what we must do to make it safe. If you thought America's drinking water problems started and ended in Flint, Michigan, think again. From big cities and suburbs to the rural heartland, chemicals linked to cancer, heart disease, obesity, birth defects, and lowered IQ routinely spill from our taps. Many are to blame: the EPA, Congress, a bipartisan coalition of powerful governors and mayors, chemical companies, and drinking water utilities - even NASA and the Pentagon. Meanwhile, the bottled water industry has been fanning our fears about tap water, but bottled water is often no safer.The tragedy is that existing technologies could launch a new age of clean, healthy, and safe tap water for only a few dollars a week per person.