The artists featured in Dirty Fingernails, make a concerted effort to do projects that require them to step away from the computer to create one-of-a-kind designs for clients and themselves. They demonstrate that good design doesn’t have to be clean—in fact, the messier the better. From silkscreen prints to collages created from photocopies, to hand-drawn lettering, each designer explains their process and why they’ve chosen to work in their chosen medium. It’s an inspirational collection that will make even the most computer-savvy designer drool.
A lively and lyrical account of one woman’s unlikely apprenticeship on a national park trail crew—and what she discovers about nature, gender, and the value of hard work Christine Byl first encountered the national parks the way most of us do: on vacation. But after she graduated from college, broke and ready for a new challenge, she joined a Glacier National Park trail crew as a seasonal “traildog” maintaining mountain trails for the millions of visitors Glacier draws every year. Byl first thought of the job as a paycheck, a summer diversion, a welcome break from “the real world” before going on to graduate school. She came to find out that work in the woods on a trail crew was more demanding, more rewarding—more real—than she ever imagined. During her first season, Byl embraces the backbreaking difficulty of the work, learning how to clear trees, move boulders, and build stairs in the backcountry. Her first mentors are the colorful characters with whom she works—the packers, sawyers, and traildogs from all walks of life—along with the tools in her hands: axe, shovel, chainsaw, rock bar. As she invests herself deeply in new work, the mountains, rivers, animals, and weather become teachers as well. While Byl expected that her tenure at the parks would be temporary, she ends up turning this summer gig into a decades-long job, moving from Montana to Alaska, breaking expectations—including her own—that she would follow a “professional” career path. Returning season after season, she eventually leads her own crews, mentoring other trail dogs along the way. In Dirt Work, Byl probes common assumptions about the division between mental and physical labor, “women’s work” and “men’s work,” white collars and blue collars. The supposedly simple work of digging holes, dropping trees, and blasting snowdrifts in fact offers her an education of the hands and the head, as well as membership in an utterly unique subculture. Dirt Work is a contemplative but unsentimental look at the pleasures of labor, the challenges of apprenticeship, and the way a place becomes a home.
Women are responsible for making 80% of all purchasing decisions. In short, this makes women the most valuable consumer group in the world. This book, by two leading marketing practitioners, shows companies how to create marketing strategies and brands that will speak powerfully to women. Many marketing and branding strategies attempt to please all of the people all of the time. The authors here demonstrate that the best marketing ideas fall out of understanding the differences between people. The most profound difference is their gender. A deep understanding of this difference can lead to more relevant, meaningful ideas, that will contribute more signficantly to a brand’s success. For example, recent research indicates that women live by four main codes – the Altruism, Aesthetic, Ordering and Affinity codes – which play a significant role in the way women judge and purchase goods and services. Brands or products that successfully reflect these codes will be the ones that stand out.
The poems in Samuel Hazo’s Sexes: The Marriage Dialogues are concerned with how husbands and wives confront each other at life’s various intersections—sometimes casually, sometimes profoundly. It is at these points that the most interesting differences in gender reveal themselves. From the first poem (“Banterers”) to the last (“Ballad of the Old Lovers”) Hazo’s attuned ear picks up quotidian conversational exchanges, but the words are never window dressing. They hint at inevitable insights and misunderstandings born out of conjugal love. Each poem is a vignette of the moving and surprising moments that are married life.
A memoir of homecoming – Heidi Across America is a gritty story of how opening our hearts to others enables us to open our hearts to ourselves and love what we find there. In the summer of 2010, Heidi Beierle had just finished her first year of graduate studies in community and regional planning and decided to pedal her bicycle solo from her home on the west coast across rural America to the Preserving the Historic Road conference in Washington, D.C. What started as a research trip turned into an intimately physical and psychological encounter with self and nationhood. Heidi was 35 at the time and didn’t love much about herself except her ability to endure grueling physical undertakings. She viewed her journey as an opportunity to fix her failures and insufficiencies. There were also some research questions she wanted to explore: Why do people live in small towns and what do they like about it? Did a bicyclist like herself bring economic benefit to the small towns she visited? What could communities do to support or invite cyclists to stay in their towns? What could cyclists do to support the communities? Along the way, she was surprised by the kindness of strangers and the emotional pinch of traveling through Wyoming where she grew up. Her journey led her through the Plains and into the Ozarks where the heat climbed to agonizing temperatures and every pedal stroke in the heat felt one closer to death. By the time she completed the trip, Heidi discovered a newfound compassion for herself and a growing love for her country. Strangers opened their hearts to her and in turn, she opened her heart to herself. And her questions began to change and mirror things many Americans are asking themselves today: How can I be okay in my own skin? What does it mean to be enough? How do I satisfy my desire to travel without harming the planet? What does it mean to love America? For many young people, it is a rite of passage to light out on an adventure to see the world and expose themselves to new experiences, but we don’t often talk about how Americans seeing America can open us to the diversity, awe, and wonder available right here in our nation. Heidi Across America offers a journey to self-love, empathy, consideration for others, and respect for the spirit of place as pathways to find connection and home.
"Even if I lived a hundred lives, I still wouldn't be exhausted." These words capture the intensity of the experiences of Claude Lanzmann, a man whose acts have always been a negation of resignation: a member of the Resistance at sixteen, a friend to Jean-Paul Sartre and a lover to Simone de Beauvoir, and the director of one of the most important films in the history of cinema, Shoah. In these pages, Lanzmann composes a hymn to life that flows from memory yet has the rhythm of a novel, as tumultuous as it is energetic. The Patagonian Hare is the story of a man who has searched at every moment for existential adventure, who has committed himself deeply to what he believes in, and who has made his life a battle. The Patagonian Hare, a number-one bestseller in France, has been translated into Spanish, German, Italian, Hebrew, Polish, Dutch, and Portuguese. Claude Lanzmann's brilliant memoir has been widely acclaimed as a masterpiece, was hailed as "a true literary and historic event" in the pages of Le Monde, and was awarded the prestigious Welt-Literaturpreis in Germany.
I'm Adrienne Haus, survivor of a mother-daughter book club. Most of us didn't want to join. My mother signed me up because I was stuck at home all summer, with my knee in a brace. CeeCee's parents forced her to join after cancelling her Paris trip because she bashed up their car. The members of "The Unbearable Book Club," CeeCee, Jill, Wallis, and I, were all going into eleventh grade A.P. English. But we weren't friends. We were literary prisoners, sweating, reading classics, and hanging out at the pool. If you want to find out how membership in a book club can end up with a person being dead, you can probably look us up under mother-daughter literary catastrophe. Or open this book and read my essay, which I'll turn in when I go back to school.
I thought I knew everything about Gwen Matson. We've been best friends since sophomore year at Analy High. I know her to be smart and confident with a retro style that would give Jackie O a run for her money—albeit a graceful, sweat-free run in kitten heels. Not once did she ever display a rabid need to record every detail of her existence. But never before had she gone on a weekend road trip with her amazing boyfriend, Coop…and his evil, yoga-toned best friend, Devil Blonde Dannika. Now she's writing to me like mad. Not that I'm complaining. I'm in gay Paris (good), meeting my future in-laws (bad), so her tireless scribbling is keeping us both sane. Usually, a well-thought-out What Would Jackie Do? helps Gwen pull it together. But this crisis is beyond help. I know Gwen and Coop are meant to be, but can their love withstand Gwen's psycho jealousy and Dannika's twisted sabotage?
Acclaimed author Lizzy Mason delivers a moving contemporary YA novel about mental illness, young romance, and the impact of family history on one teen’s future, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson, Robin Benway, and Kathleen Glasgow. When eighteen-year-old Sydney Holman announces that she has decided to attend NYU, her overprotective mom is devastated. Her decision means she will be living in the Big City instead of commuting to nearby Rutgers like her mom had hoped. It also means she’ll be close to off-limits but dreamy Grayson—a guitar prodigy who is going to Juilliard in the fall and very much isn’t single. But while she dreams of her new life, Sydney discovers a world-changing truth about her father. She knew he left when she was little due to a drug addiction. But no one told her he had schizophrenia or that he was currently living on the streets of New York City. She seizes the opportunity to get to know him, to understand who he is and learn what may lie in store for her if she, too, is diagnosed. Even as she continues to fall for Grayson, Sydney is faced with a difficult decision: Stay close to home so her mom can watch over her, or follow her dreams despite the risks?
