Grays the Mountain Sends by Bryan Schutmaat documents the rugged landscapes and people of the great American West. The images describe a series of mining sites and small mountain towns and the people who have worked in them, built them, and a few younger people who might, or might not, be looking for a way out of them.
"These photographs depict various places in the American West. They were taken over a one hundred year period, from the 1870s through the 1970s. The photographers presented here range from the completely unknown to some of America's most distinguished practitioners of the medium. All images were sourced from digital public archives and remain readily available to download."--page after plate 43.
In a startling look at the classic Annapurna—the most famous book about mountaineering—David Roberts discloses what really happened on the legendary expedition to the Himalayan peak. In June 1950, a team of mountaineers was the first to conquer an 8,000-meter peak. Maurice Herzog, the leader of the expedition, became a national hero in France, and Annapurna, his account of the historic ascent, has long been regarded as the ultimate tale of courage and cooperation under the harshest of conditions. In True Summit, David Roberts presents a fascinating revision of this classic tale. Using newly available documents and information gleaned from a rare interview with Herzog (the only climber on the team still living), Roberts shows that the expedition was torn by dissent. As he re-creates the actual events, Roberts lays bare Herzog's self-serving determination and bestows long-delayed credit to the most accomplished and unsung heroes. These new revelations will inspire young adventurers and change forever the way we think about this victory in the mountains and the climbers who achieved it.
Ambition will fuel him. Competition will drive him. But power has its price. It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined - every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.
A kaleidoscopic tribute to San Francisco by a life-long Bay Area resident and co-founder of Salon explores specific city sites including the Golden Gate Bridge and the Land's End sea cliffs while tying his visits to key historical events. By the author of Shadow Knights. 30,000 first printing.
A haunting story of magic and myth, of one boy caught between worlds, and of the lengths he will travel to save those he loves. "Dark, magical, and mysterious, Bone Jack captured me and carried me away." —Rebecca Stead, Newbery Medal-winning author of When You Reach Me and Goodbye Stranger Times have been tough for Ash lately, and all he wants is for everything to go back to the way it used to be. Back before drought ruined the land and disease killed off the livestock. Before Ash’s father went off to war and returned carrying psychological scars. Before his best friend, Mark, started acting strangely. As Ash trains for his town’s annual Stag Chase—a race rooted in violent, ancient lore—he’s certain that if he can win and make his father proud, life will return to normal. But the line between reality and illusion is rapidly blurring, and the past has a way of threatening the present. When a run in the mountains brings Ash face-to-face with Bone Jack—a figure that guards the boundary between the living world and the dead—everything changes once more. As dark energies take root and the world as he knows it is upended, it’s up to Ash to restore things to their proper order and literally run for his life. Praise for Bone Jack: A 2015 Carnegie Medal nominee A 2015 Branford Boase Award nominee "Though this might seem like justanother ghost story, there’s subtle depth here, too, and teen fans of both horror and literary fiction will findlots to like." —Booklist "Crowe is a masterly storyteller whose lyrical prose will enthrall young readers. A page-turning and atmospheric offering for middle graders who crave dark fantasy." —School Library Journal "Crowe is particularly effective in evoking the sensory elements of the natural world...eminiscent of David Almond’s work in its sensuality and mysticism." —Horn Book "British author Crowe crafts a tense, atmospheric tale steeped in folklore, where the setting itself comes alive. It’s a quick but memorable read, and a fascinating take on the power of belief and healing." —Publishers Weekly "The action scenes around the chase itself are gripping, with lots of high drama and no guaranteed happy outcome. What’s even more memorable, however, is the lingering feeling of loss that shapes so many lives in this British import; plenty of real-life monsters like war, depression, and isolation haunt people as much as ghostly hound boys." —BCCB "[P]owerful and beguiling." —Telegraph "A lovely, eerie adventure, balancing the ancient magic with Ash's very real character growth." —Kirkus Reviews
Drawing from the vast photography collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, American Geography charts a visual history of land use in the United States From the earliest photographic records of human habitation to the latest aerial and digital pictures, from almost uninhabited desert and isolated mountainous territories to suburban sprawl and densely populated cities, this compilation offers an increasingly nuanced perspective on the American landscape. Divided by region, these photographs address ways in which different histories and traditions of land use have given rise to different cultural transitions: from the Midwestern prairies and agricultural traditions of the South, to the riverine systems in the Northeast, and the environmental challenges and riches of the far West. American Geography also looks at the evidence of older habitation from the adobe dwellings and ancient cultures of the Southwest to the Midwestern mounds, many of them prehistoric. SFMOMA's last photography exhibition to consider land use, Crossing the Frontier (1996), examined only the American West. At the time, this focus offered a different way to think about landscape, and a useful way to reconsider pictures of the region. American Geography expands upon the groundwork laid by Crossing the Frontier, providing a complex, thought-provoking survey. Photographers include: Carleton E. Watkins, Barbara Bosworth, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Mitch Epstein, An-My Lê, William Eggleston, Alec Soth, Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen, Victoria Sambunaris, Emmet Gowin, Robert Adams, Terry Evans, Dorothea Lange and Mark Ruwedel, among others.
"Time travel, UFOs, mysterious planets, stigmata, rock-throwing poltergeists, huge footprints, bizarre rains of fish and frogs-nearly a century after Charles Fort's Book of the Damned was originally published, the strange phenomenon presented in this book remains largely unexplained by modern science. Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you"--Taken from Good Reads website.
Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Effie Gray, a beautiful and intelligent young socialite, rattled the foundations of England's Victorian age. Married at nineteen to John Ruskin, the leading art critic of the time, she found herself trapped in a loveless, unconsummated union after Ruskin rejected her on their wedding night. On a trip to Scotland she met John Everett Millais, Ruskin's protégé, and fell passionately in love with him. In a daring act, Effie left Ruskin, had their marriage annulled and entered into a long, happy marriage with Millais. Suzanne Fagence Cooper has gained exclusive access to Effie's previously unseen letters and diaries to tell the complete story of this scandalous love triangle. In Cooper's hands, this passionate love story also becomes an important new look at the work of both Ruskin and Millais with Effie emerging as a key figure in their artistic development. Effie is a heartbreakingly beautiful book about three lives passionately entwined with some of the greatest paintings of the pre-Raphaelite period.