What is the purpose of life on Earth? Philosopher Jacob Needleman frames man's role on the planet in a completely new and fresh way, moving beyond the usual environmental concerns to reveal how the care and maintenance of a world is something vital and basic to our existence as authentic human beings. In some of his most deeply affecting writing, Needleman draws on his childhood experiences with a terminally ill friend whose impending death forces the young boys to face questions of the meaning of existence at an early age—questions that Needleman carried with him in his explorations of science and philosophy throughout his career as a scholar of religions. The conclusions that he reaches will give all of us a new sense of the purpose of our lives and the planet we live on.
From “an exceptional storyteller,” Somewhere in the Unknown World is a collection of powerful stories of refugees who have found new lives in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet. All over this country, there are refugees. But beyond the headlines, few know who they are, how they live, or what they have lost. Although Minnesota is not known for its diversity, the state has welcomed more refugees per capita than any other, from Syria to Bosnia, Thailand to Liberia. Now, with nativism on the rise, Kao Kalia Yang—herself a Hmong refugee—has gathered stories of the stateless who today call the Twin Cities home. Here are people who found the strength and courage to rebuild after leaving all they hold dear. Awo and her mother, who escaped from Somalia, reunite with her father on the phone every Saturday, across the span of continents and decades. Tommy, born in Minneapolis to refugees from Cambodia, cannot escape the war that his parents carry inside. As Afghani flees the reach of the Taliban, he seeks at every stop what he calls a certificate of his humanity. Mr. Truong brings pho from Vietnam to Frogtown in St. Paul, reviving a crumbling block as well as his own family. In Yang’s exquisite, necessary telling, these fourteen stories for refugee journeys restore history and humanity to America's strangers and redeem its long tradition of welcome.
An in-depth look at the history and culture of mobile homes in the United States. In American popular imagination, the mobile home evokes images of cramped interiors, cheap materials, and occupants too poor or unsavory to live anywhere else. Since the 1940s and ‘50s, however, mobile home manufacturers have improved standards of construction and now present them as an affordable alternative to conventional site-built homes. Today one of every fourteen Americans lives in a mobile home. In The Unknown World of the Mobile Home authors John Fraser Hart, Michelle J. Rhodes, and John T. Morgan illuminate the history and culture of these often misunderstood domiciles. They describe early mobile homes, which were trailers designed to be pulled behind automobiles and which were more often than not poorly constructed and unequal to the needs of those who used them. During the 1970s, however, Congress enacted federal standards for the quality and safety of mobile homes, which led to innovation in design and the production of much more attractive and durable models. These models now comply with local building codes and many are designed to look like conventional houses. As a result, one out every five new single-family housing units purchased in the United States is a mobile home, sited everywhere from the conventional trailer park to custom-designed “estates” aimed at young couples and retirees. Despite all these changes in manufacture and design, even the most immobile mobile homes are still sold, financed, regulated, and taxed as vehicles. With a wealth of detail and illustrations, The Unknown World of the Mobile Home provides readers with an in-depth look into this variation on the American dream. “A clear, concise, and innovative look at the history, the economics, and the politics of the mobile home. The authors reveal the inner workings of mobile home living by drawing upon a wide variety of sources, from industry data to interviews conducted at mobile home parks across the country. Further, they explore new types of mobile home communities—those assembled for workers at meat-processing centers in southwest Kansas, for example—that complicate the familiar image of the mobile home park as retirement village. The ideas presented in this book provide a solid starting point for many detailed studies on this important topic.” —Karl Raitz, University of Kentucky, author of The National Road
In the final novel of the Liminals, a found family of Black superheroes has one last chance to save the world. After traveling back in time to rescue his fostered daughter, Taggert has returned to the present and found himself in his favorite place: up against the wall. But the world they’ve returned to is not the one they left: everything is slightly grayer, the music is boring, joy is just out of reach. The liminals’ entropic enemies, the Alters, are trying to bring about the end of the world by sucking the life—literally—out of enough people to tip the balance their way. Traveling from Jamaica to London to Indonesia to the heart of the whirlwind in the desert at the heart of all deserts, Taggert and his found family of liminals and supporters have to find a way to bring back the joy before they’re all ground down into the gray dust.
Corbin recreates the life and world of a man about whom nothing is known except for his entries in the civil registries and historical knowledge about the times in which he lived: Louis-Francois Pinagot, a forester and clog maker who lived during the heart of the nineteenth century--the age of Romanticism, of Hugo and Berlioz--from the Napoleonic Wars to the Third Republic.
In the third Liminal Novel Taggert's adopted daughter disappears so he only has one option: find her. When Taggert's adopted daughter goes missing he suspects the hand of an old enemy. He gathers friends, family, and even those who don't quite trust that he has left his violent past behind. But their search leads them to an unexpected place, the past, and the consequences of their journey have a price that is higher than they can afford.
The Emperor reigned in San Francisco with a brutal blending of ancient tyranny and advanced technology. The mass of men and women were slaves, but sex was free for all. Barbarian Indian tribes occupied the Midwest, and provided savage entertainment in sadistic gladiatorial games. Pagan Rome had never died, and Christ had never been born. This was the year 2717, and Simon Ash, time traveler, fought for his liberty and life and very soul in an America that once had been his home and was now a nightmare of the unknown…
Could the strange actually be true? This book takes readers on a tour of the eerie and unexplained - from the search for vanished civilizations to the science of real-life zombies, from famous UFO sightings to encounters with ghosts and otherworldly creatures, and much more.
Prepare to learn everything we still don’t know about our strange and mysterious universe Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore —there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the universe: the enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists, including: * Why does the universe have a speed limit? * Why aren't we all made of antimatter? * What (or who) is attacking Earth with tiny, superfast particles? * What is dark matter, and why does it keep ignoring us? It turns out the universe is full of weird things that don't make any sense. But Cham and Whiteson make a compelling case that the questions we can't answer are as interesting as the ones we can. This fully illustrated introduction to the biggest mysteries in physics also helpfully demystifies many complicated things we do know about, from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes. With equal doses of humor and delight, Cham and Whiteson invite us to see the universe as a possibly boundless expanse of uncharted territory that's still ours to explore.
