At her husband's urging, Johanna Reiss returned with her family to Holland to chronicle the time she spent hiding from the Nazis during WWII, resulting in her Newbery Honor-wining The Upstairs Room. But unknown to the millions who read her beloved classic, behind the dark and painful story of the book was a still darker tale: Reiss' husband returned to America early and committed suicide at age 37, leaving no note. Subtle and disturbing, the book is a powerful consideration of memory, violence, and loss, told in a stunning and sparse narrative style.
Franz Jèagerstèatter, an Austrian farmer, devoted husband and father, and devout Catholic, was executed in 1943 for refusing to serve in the Nazi army. Before taking this stand Jèagerstèatter had consulted both his pastor and his local bishop, who instructed him to do his duty and to obey the law - an instruction that violated his conscience. For many years Jèagerstèatter's solitary witness was honored by the Catholic peace movement, while viewed with discomfort by many of his fellow Austrians. Now, with his beatification in 2007, his example has been embraced by the universal church.
"When Jean-Luc Godard, exemplary director of the French New Wave, wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Among the greatest cinematic innovations, Godard's films shift fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. Similarly, his persona projects shifting images - cultural hero, impassioned loner, shrewd businessman. Hailed by filmmakers as a - if not the - key influence, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mysterious as he is indispensable." "In Everything is Cinema, critic Richard Brody has amassed hundreds of interviews with friends, family, and collaborators to demystify the elusive director and paint the fullest picture yet of his life and work. Paying as much attention to Godard's revolutionary technical inventions as to the political and emotional forces of the postwar world, Brody traces an arc from the director's early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless and Contempt, to the grand vision of his later years. He vividly depicts Godard's wealthy, conservative family, his fluid and often disturbing politics, his tumultuous dealings with fellow filmmakers, and his troubled relations with women."--Jacket.
Sunday Times Bestseller‘A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement’ Charles Foster Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month (September) Are trees social beings? How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings?
An iconoclast and best-selling author of both nonfiction and fiction, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has spent a lifetime observing, thinking, and writing about the cultures of animals such as lions, wolves, dogs, deer, and humans. In this compulsively readable book, she provides a plainspoken, big-picture look at the commonality of life on our planet, from the littlest microbes to the largest lizards. Inspired by the idea of symbiosis in evolution—that all living things evolve in a series of cooperative relationships—Thomas takes readers on a journey through the progression of life. Along the way she shares the universal likenesses, experiences, and environments of “Gaia’s creatures,” from amoebas in plant soil to the pets we love, from proud primates to Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers on the African savanna. Fervently rejecting “anthropodenial,” the notion that nonhuman life does not share characteristics with humans, Thomas instead shows that paramecia can learn, plants can communicate, humans aren’t really as special as we think we are—and that it doesn’t take a scientist to marvel at the smallest inhabitants of the natural world and their connections to all living things. A unique voice on anthropology and animal behavior, Thomas challenges scientific convention and the jargon that prevents us all from understanding all living things better. This joyfully written book is a fascinating look at the challenges and behaviors shared by creatures from bacteria to larvae to parasitic fungi, a potted hyacinth to the author herself, and all those in between.
Born into slavery on an Alabama plantation in 1853, Bill Traylor worked as a sharecropper for most of his life. But in 1928 he moved to Montgomery and changed his life, becoming a self-taught lyric painter of extraordinary ability and power. From 1936 to 1946, he sat on a street corner—old, ill, and homeless—and created well over 1,200 paintings. Collected and later promoted by Charles Shannon, a young Montgomery artist, his work received star placement in the Corcoran Gallery’s 1982 exhibition “Black Folk Art in America.” From then on, the spare and powerful “radical modernity” of Traylor’s work helped place him among the rising stars of twentieth-century American artists. Most critics and art historians who analyze Traylor’s paintings emphasize his extraordinary form and evaluate the content as either simple or enigmatic narratives of black life. In Painting a Hidden Life, historian Mechal Sobel’s trenchant analysis reveals a previously unrecognized central core of meaning in Traylor’s near-hidden symbolism—a call for retribution in response to acts of lynching and other violence toward blacks. Drawing on historical records and oral histories, Sobel carefully explores the relationship between Traylor’s life and his paintings and arrives at new interpretations of his art. From an interview with Traylor’s great-granddaughter, Sobel learned that Traylor believed the Birmingham policemen who killed his son in 1929 in fact lynched him—a story that neither Traylor nor his family had previously disclosed. The trauma of this event, Sobel explains, propelled Traylor to find a way to voice his rage and spurred the creation of his powerful, mysterious visual language. Traylor’s encoded paintings tell a vibrant, multilayered story of conjure power, sexual rivalry, and violence. Revealing an extraordinarily diverse visual universe, the symbols in Traylor’s paintings reflect the worlds he lived in between 1853 and 1949: the plantation conjure milieu into which he was born, the blues culture in which he matured, the world of Jim Crow he learned to secretly violate, and the Catholic values he adopted in his final years. From his African heritage, Traylor drew symbols not readily understood by whites. He mixed traditional African images with conjure signs, with symbols of black Baptists and Freemasons, and with images central to the hidden black protest movement—the cross and the lynching tree. In this groundbreaking examination of an extraordinary artist, Sobel uncovers the internalized pain of several generations and traces the paths African Americans blazed long before the march down the Selma–Montgomery highway.
The anatomy and physiology of the basal ganglia and their relation to brain and behavior, disorders and therapies, and philosophy of mind and moral values. The main task of the basal ganglia—a group of subcortical nuclei, located at the base of the brain—is to optimize and execute our automatic behavior. In this book, Hagai Bergman analyzes the anatomy and physiology of the basal ganglia, discussing their relation to brain and behavior, to disorders and therapies, and even to moral values. Drawing on his forty years of studying the basal ganglia, Bergman presents new information on physiology and computational models, Parkinson’s disease and other ganglia-related disorders, and such therapies as deep brain stimulation. Focusing on studies of nonhuman primates and human basal ganglia and relying on system physiology and in vivo extra-cellular recording techniques, Bergman first describes the major brain structures that constitute the basal ganglia, the morphology of their cellular elements, their synaptic connectivity and their physiological function in health and disease. He discusses the computational physiology of the healthy basal ganglia, describing four generations of computational models, and then traces the computational physiology of basal ganglia–related disorders and their treatments, including Parkinson’s disease and its pharmacological and surgical therapies. Finally, Bergman considers the implications of these findings for such moral concerns as free will. Explaining this leap into domains rarely explored in neuroscientific accounts, Bergman writes that the longer he studies the basal ganglia, the more he is convinced that they are truly the base of both brain and mind.
This is an inspiring collection of Edith Stein's shorter spiritual writings, many available for the first time in English translation. Topics include: Shorter spiritual writings on prayer, liturgy, and the spirit of Carmel. They were composed during her final years, often at the request of her Carmelite superiors. Here the noted philosopher, Catholic feminist, and convert shares her reflections on prayer, liturgy, the lives of holy women, the spirit of Carmel, the mystery of the Christian vocation, and the meaning of the cross in our lives. These essays, poems, and dramatic pieces offer readers a unique glimpse into the hidden inner life of one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women.The book includes 5 photos and fully linked index.
In jaw-dropping photos, Doug Wechsler captures the life cycle of the American toad from egg to tadpole to adult. To get these images, Wechsler sat in a pond wearing waders, went out night after night in search of toads, and cut his own glass to make a home aquarium. The resulting photos reveal metamorphosis in extreme close-up as readers have never seen it before. Budding naturalists will be transfixed by this unprecedented peek into the secrets of tadpole transformation. A book that encourages observation and conservation and may start some young biologists off on their own lifelong quests to understand animals — Kirkus Reviews, starred review A fascinating look at toad development — Booklist, starred review Suitable for libraries needing to bolster their early nonfiction collections — School Library Journal A remarkable visual chronicle of an easily overlooked creature — Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Chicago Public Library’s 2017 Best of the Best Books selection 2018 Green Earth Book Honor for Children’s nonfiction
A pioneering researcher’s illuminating account of Arctic ice—its secret history and dire future Barely inhabited, the Arctic is an alien world to most of us. It also holds critical clues about the future of our planet. In The Hidden Life of Ice, Marco Tedesco invites us to Greenland, where he and his fellow scientists are doggedly researching the dramatic changes afoot. Following the arc of his typical day at work, Tedesco unearths the secrets in the ice—from evidence of long-extinct “polar camels” to the fantastically weird microorganisms living at freezing temperatures in cryoconite holes. Tedesco weaves together the bald facts on climate change with poetic reflections on this endangered landscape, the epic deeds of great Arctic explorers, and the legends of the rare local populations. The Hidden Life of Ice is more than a diatribe on climate—it’s a moving tribute to a beautiful place that may be gone too soon.
