On May 26, 1854, Arthur Munby met Hannah Cullwick. He was a solicitor for the Ecclesiastical Commission, and he loathed his job. She was a servant, a maid of all work. This first encounter marked the beginning of a relationship which was to endure for more than fifty years. Drawing on their diaries, letters, and Munby's photographs of Hannah, Diane Atkinson paints a picture of the wilder shores of Victorian sexuality. Love and Dirt is the story of a deep and lasting love between two extraordinary individuals who breached the barriers of class and endangered their vastly different stations in Victorian society.
I Love Dirt! presents 52 open-ended activities to help you engage your child in the outdoors. No matter what your location—from a small patch of green in the city to the wide-open meadows of the country—each activity is meant to promote exploration, stimulate imagination, and heighten a child's sense of wonder. Jennifer Ward is the author of numerous acclaimed parenting books and books for children, inspired by nature. "Jennifer Ward has created a book that will serve to gently introduce parents to nature, even as parents are using it to help guide a child into the narural world. Children—and parents—learn to observe, as well as appreciate, the basic joys of getting their hands dirty and feet wet. Discoveres become shared experience."—from the forword by Richard Louv
Community farms. Mud spas. Mineral paints. Nematodes. The world is waking up to the beauty and mystery of dirt. This anthology celebrates the Earth's generous crust, bringing together essays by award-winning scientists, authors, artists, and dirt lovers to tell dirt's exuberant tales. Geographically broad and topically diverse, these essays reveal life as lived by dirt fanatics - admiring the first worm of spring, taking a childhood twirl across a dusty Kansas farm, calculating how soil breathes, or baking mud pies. Essayists build a dirt house, center a marriage around dirt, sink down into marshy heaven, and learn to read dirt's own language. Scientists usher us deep underground with the worms and mycorrhizae to explore the vast and largely ignored natural processes occurring beneath our feet. Whether taking a trek to Venezuela to touch the oldest dirt in the world or reveling in the blessings of our own native soils, these muscular essays answer the important question: How do you get down with dirt? A literary homage to dirt and its significance in our lives, this book will interest hikers, gardeners, teachers, urbanites, farmers, environmentalists, ecologists, and others intrigued by our planet's alluring skin. Essayists include Vandana Shiva, Peter Heller, Janisse Ray, Bernd Heinrich, Linda Hogan, Wes Jackson, BK Loren, David Montgomery, Laura Pritchett, and Deborah Koons Garcia.
Unearth the glorious mysteries that lie beneath our feet with 15 fun and fact-filled poems about soil--what it is, how it's made, and who lives in it! A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year Named to the Texas Bluebonnet Master List Spectacular vertical panoramas illustrating life underground accompany 15 funny, fascinating poems that explore dirt and the many creatures that make their homes underground. Spiders, earthworms, ants, chipmunks and more crawl across the pages, between stretching roots and buried stones. Chipmunk, for such a little squirt you sure do move a lot of dirt, you sure do dig your tunnels deep, you sure do find some nuts to keep, you sure do know your underground. Chipmunk, you sure do get around. This unique celebration of dirt-- what makes it, what lives in it, and the many wonderful things the soil does to support life on our planet-- is a whimsical, cleverly-illustrated pick for kids who love animals... or who just love playing in the mud. From the creators of And the Bullfrogs Sing, a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, this intriguing, uniquely charming nature book has been vetted by experts and includes an author's note with more information about all the featured creatures, as well as a bibliography. An NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students An NCTE Notable Poetry Book
• An extraordinary and absorbing novelisation of one family’s tale of Holocaust survival and a grandson’s unrelenting dedication to ensuring his ancestor’s stories will never be forgotten • The Book of Dirt reimagines the lives of Jakub Rand, a rabbi’s son who is tasked with curating Eichmann’s infamous Museum of the Extinct Race, and Františka Roubíčkova, a converted Jew who would go on to establish a smuggling network that would stretch as far as Auschwitz • Presser began writing the novel after seeing an article in the local community paper that purported to tell a very different version of his grandfather’s fabled Holocaust story. Presser subsequently embarked on a seven-year search across four continents to uncover the truth • With elements of magical realism and innovative storytelling, The Book of Dirt is an imaginative and bold novel about family myths – how they come to be formed, the way in which they are perpetuated and what happens when we subject them to scrutiny • Bram Presser is a much-loved Melbourne personality, known for his involvement in the local music scene and Jewish community. He is a criminal lawyer and community activist
"También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams. Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. Even though she knows they'll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with four books he would like to buy--two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia's husband's tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia--trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier's reach doesn't extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to? American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed when they finish reading it. A page-turner filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page, it is a literary achievement."--
Accosted by hatred and living out a dismal existence in Dirt Place, we humans have tried and failed to find the source of love. Many philosophies of love have proved powerless in satisfying our need for this pure and true thing. One after another, the world's religions fail to illuminate its reality and beauty. All the while, the overwhelming presence of evil has forced love into the shadows of elusiveness. But through the barrage of attempts to explain love's source, it is the Christian God alone who has brought meaning, value, and eternal significance to this oft-misunderstood virtue. It is the Christian God alone whose divine and perfect love was revealed in all its splendor in the cross of Jesus Christ. In Leaving Dirt Place, Jonah Haddad explores a multitude of philosophies and religions whose flawed accounts of love must ultimately yield to the truth of Christianity. This thoughtful and challenging apologetic presents a clear case for the true God of love.
Dirt is a story about the places where we start. From a single-wide trailer in the mountains of rural West Virginia to the halls of Yale Law School, Mary Marantz's story is one of remembering our roots while turning our faces to the sky. From growing up in that trailer, where it rained just as hard inside as out and the smell of mildew hung thick in the air, Mary has known what it is to feel broken and disqualified because of the muddy scars leaving smudged fingerprints across our lives. Generations of her family lived and logged in those hauntingly treacherous woods, risking life and limb just to barely scrape by. And yet that very struggle became the redemption song God used to write a life she never dreamed of. Mixed with warmth, wit, and the bittersweet, sometimes achingly heartbreaking places we go when we dig in instead of give up, Dirt is a story of healing. With gut-wrenching honesty and hard-won wisdom, Mary shares her story for anyone who has ever walked into the world and felt like their scars were still on display, showing that you are braver, better, and more empathetic for what you have survived. Because God does his best work in the muddy, messy, and broken--if we'll only learn to dig in.
“You can almost taste the food in Bill Buford’s Dirt, an engrossing, beautifully written memoir about his life as a cook in France.” —The Wall Street Journal What does it take to master French cooking? This is the question that drives Bill Buford to abandon his perfectly happy life in New York City and pack up and (with a wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow) move to Lyon, the so-called gastronomic capital of France. But what was meant to be six months in a new and very foreign city turns into a wild five-year digression from normal life, as Buford apprentices at Lyon’s best boulangerie, studies at a legendary culinary school, and cooks at a storied Michelin-starred restaurant, where he discovers the exacting (and incomprehensibly punishing) rigueur of the professional kitchen. With his signature humor, sense of adventure, and masterful ability to bring an exotic and unknown world to life, Buford has written the definitive insider story of a city and its great culinary culture.
