From the Introduction: Letters to Dali is the book I’ve always dreamed of writing. It is a collection of letters meant to be easily read. Each letter covers a topic I believe has had an impact on our lives as Arabs living in the Middle East. And as Lebanese who have suffered, but did not learn, from the terrible consequences of civil war. The letters’ main purpose is to send a simple message: no one idea or person holds the ultimate truth. Truth, as portrayed by politicians and the clergy, as a path to follow, to die or kill for, is not truth. It is a means to an end—their means and their end. On their path the individual becomes a helpless tool. It is this individual for whom Letters to Dalia is written. This individual can be anyone.
New York Times bestseller Now with a new Epilogue, containing letters of response from Palestinian readers. "A profound and original book, the work of a gifted thinker."--Daphne Merkin, The Wall Street Journal Attempting to break the agonizing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author of Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes. I call you "neighbor" because I don’t know your name, or anything personal about you. Given our circumstances, "neighbor" might be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other’s dream, violators of each other’s sense of home. We are incarnations of each other’s worst historical nightmares. Neighbors? Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is one Israeli’s powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians and into the hearts of "the enemy." In a series of letters, Yossi Klein Halevi explains what motivated him to leave his native New York in his twenties and move to Israel to participate in the drama of the renewal of a Jewish homeland, which he is committed to see succeed as a morally responsible, democratic state in the Middle East. This is the first attempt by an Israeli author to directly address his Palestinian neighbors and describe how the conflict appears through Israeli eyes. Halevi untangles the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century. In lyrical, evocative language, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel, using history and personal experience as his guide. Halevi’s letters speak not only to his Palestinian neighbor, but to all concerned global citizens, helping us understand the painful choices confronting Israelis and Palestinians that will ultimately help determine the fate of the region.
Is Dalia’s little blue box magic—or is the real magic the generosity that helps her fill it? When Dalia learns about tzedakah, the Jewish tradition of charity and caring, she creates a tzedakah box where she can keep the money she’s saved to help those in need. Her little brother Yossi is curious about the Hebrew letters painted on the box. "Are those letters magic?" he asks. They must be because Dalia tells him she's putting a big yellow comforter, a butterfly bush, and a banana cream pie inside of it! How ever will she do it? Though there may be joy in receiving, Dalia’s story serves as a powerful reminder that the greatest joy of all comes from giving generously to others.
Before she is even five years old, little Dalia has the responsibility of helping her mother and looking after her two younger siblings. Dalia washes the family clothes, collects buckets of water to wash their clay cooking pots, and feeds the animals. There is never a moment of rest for her in El Cortez, Mexico, as the first female born into her family. Enduring beatings and never hearing a kind word—life is hard. When Dalia is twelve years old, a stranger kidnaps her and forces her to live with him and his family. Even though her father is a harsh man, Dalia misses her home. During this time, she often wishes for death. Her life becomes even more complicated, when at age thirteen, she gives birth to her baby girl Maribel. Fearing for her life and the life of her child, Dalia runs away. Alone and afraid, she travels north. Dalia, a novel, follows one little girl’s journey from her childhood home in Mexico as she tries to make a new home in the United States. It’s a story filled with pain and heartache and hope for a better life.
"The author offers an empowering perspective for people whose identities are often marginalized in the health and wellness industry." —Manhattan Book Review Become the healthiest and happiest version of yourself using wellness tools designed specifically for BIPOC and LGBTQ folks. The lack of BIPOC and LGBTQ representation in the fields of health and nutrition has led to repeated racist and unscientific biases that negatively impact the very people they purport to help. Many representatives of the increasingly popular body positivity movement actually add to the body image concerns of queer people of color by emphasizing cisgender, heteronormative, and Eurocentric standards of beauty. Few mainstream body positivity resources address the intersectional challenges of anti-Blackness, colorism, homophobia, transphobia, and generational trauma that are at the root of our struggles with wellness and self-care. In Decolonizing Wellness: A QTBIPOC-Centered Guide to Escape the Diet Trap, Heal Your Self-Image, and Achieve Body Liberation, registered dietitian and nutritionist Dalia Kinsey will help readers to improve their health without restriction, eliminate stress around food and eating, and turn food into a source of pleasure instead of shame. A road map to body acceptance and self-care for queer people of color, Decolonizing Wellness is filled with practical eating practices, journal prompts, affirmations, and mindfulness tools. Ultimately, decolonizing nutrition is essential not only to our personal well-being but to our community’s well-being and to the possibility of greater social transformation. This is a body positivity and food freedom book for marginalized folks. It’s a guide to throwing out food rules in exchange for internal cues and adopting a self-love-based approach to eating. It’s about learning to trust our bodies and turning mealtime into a time for celebration and healing. It’s also a love letter to those of us who struggle with our bodies and a gentle plea for us to do the work it takes to accept, trust, and love ourselves.
THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE LOST WIFE Set against the rich backdrop of World War II Italy, Garden of Letters captures the hope, suspense, and romance of an uncertain era, in an epic intertwining story of first love, great tragedy, and spectacular bravery. Portofino, Italy, 1943. A young woman steps off a boat in a scenic coastal village. Although she knows how to disappear in a crowd, Elodie is too terrified to slip by the German officers while carrying her poorly forged identity papers. She is frozen until a man she’s never met before claims to know her. In desperate need of shelter, Elodie follows him back to his home on the cliffs of Portofino. Only months before, Elodie Bertolotti was a cello prodigy in Verona, unconcerned with world events. But when Mussolini’s Fascist regime strikes her family, Elodie is drawn into the burgeoning resistance movement by Luca, a young and impassioned bookseller. As the occupation looms, she discovers that her unique musical talents, and her courage, have the power to save lives. In Portofino, young doctor Angelo Rosselli gives the frightened and exhausted girl sanctuary. He is a man with painful secrets of his own, haunted by guilt and remorse. But Elodie’s arrival has the power to awaken a sense of hope and joy that Angelo thought was lost to him forever.
Labeled as a wicked scoundrel by Society, Elliott Walker, the Earl of Aberland, does nothing to deny the outrageous rumors that blacken his reputation. In truth, he leads a double life, working for British Intelligence both in London and abroad. He’s returned home from a lengthy mission to find an unexpected addition to his household, upsetting the careful balance of his secret life and tempting him in ways he never dreamed possible. Sophia Markham, the daughter of an impoverished viscount whose wastrel ways broke her mother’s heart, was raised by her bitter spinster aunt. Sophia knows there are grave consequences to trusting men, especially rogues. When her aunt dies, Sophia finds a position as a companion in London, determined to avoid marriage at all costs. While Elliott would grant any wish to the grandmother he loves so dearly, he has no choice but to frighten away her beguiling new companion by playing the scoundrel. Having a set of beautiful hazel eyes watching his every move puts his hidden identity at risk. Sophia is shocked at her attraction to the handsome earl, the exact type of man she's been taught not to trust. But she can't ignore the evidence--or her heart--that suggests there's more to Elliott than meets the eye. Dare she trust him and his kisses? Or are his secrets deadlier than she could ever imagine?
“Some secrets died with her. Others are here, lingering in the air among us.” *** When popular highschoolerJulianna Robinson takes her life days before her final year of highschool commence, her best friend, Dalia Parker, and her twin brother James are left to pick up the pieces as she left letters to those she feels she has wronged. But as they deliver them to their recipients and turn get closer to each other, Dalia and James realize that there were some skeletons that Julia hid in the closet, ones that could change their lives...forever.
Israel’s victory in the June 1967 Six Day War provided a unique opportunity for resolving the decades-old Arab-Zionist conflict. Having seized the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights, Israel for the first time in its history had something concrete to offer its Arab neighbors: it could trade land for peace. Yet the political deadlock persisted after the guns fell silent. This book sets outto find out why.Avi Raz places Israel’s conduct under an uncompromising lens. He meticulously examines the critical two years following the June war and substantially revises our understanding of how and why Israeli-Arab secret contacts came to naught. Mining newly declassified records in Israeli, American, British, and UN archives, as well as private papers of individual participants, Raz dispels the myth of overall Arab intransigence and arrives at new and unexpected conclusions. In short, he concludes that Israel’s postwar diplomacy was deliberately ineffective because its leaders preferred land over peace with its neighbors. The book throws a great deal of light not only on the post-1967 period but also on the problems and pitfalls of peacemaking in the Middle East today.
Winner of the LA Times Book Prize in Current Interest An instant New York Times Bestseller! “Stirring…Lithwick’s approach, interweaving interviews with legal commentary, allows her subjects to shine...Inspiring.”—New York Times Book Review “In Dahlia Lithwick’s urgent, engaging Lady Justice, Dobbs serves as a devastating bookend to a story that begins in hope.”—Boston Globe Dahlia Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won After the sudden shock of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, many Americans felt lost and uncertain. It was clear he and his administration were going to pursue a series of retrograde, devastating policies. What could be done? Immediately, women lawyers all around the country, independently of each other, sprang into action, and they had a common goal: they weren’t going to stand by in the face of injustice, while Trump, Mitch McConnell, and the Republican party did everything in their power to remake the judiciary in their own conservative image. Over the next four years, the women worked tirelessly to hold the line against the most chaotic and malign presidency in living memory. There was Sally Yates, the acting attorney general of the United States, who refused to sign off on the Muslim travel ban. And Becca Heller, the founder of a refugee assistance program who brought the fight over the travel ban to the airports. And Roberta Kaplan, the famed commercial litigator, who sued the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. And, of course, Stacey Abrams, whose efforts to protect the voting rights of millions of Georgians may well have been what won the Senate for the Democrats in 2020. These are just a handful of the stories Lithwick dramatizes in thrilling detail to tell a brand-new and deeply inspiring account of the Trump years. With unparalleled access to her subjects, she has written a luminous book, not about the villains of the Trump years, but about the heroes. And as the country confronts the news that the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-appointed justices, will soon overturn Roe v. Wade, Lithwick shines a light on not only the major consequences of such a decision, but issues a clarion call to all who might, like the women in this book, feel the urgency to join the fight. A celebration of the tireless efforts, legal ingenuity, and indefatigable spirit of the women whose work all too often went unrecognized at the time, Lady Justice is destined to be treasured and passed from hand to hand for generations to come, not just among lawyers and law students, but among all optimistic and hopeful Americans.
