A tender and fantastical adventure story perfect for fans of Coraline. After Cecelia Dahl’s little brother, Celadon, dies tragically, his soul goes where all souls go: the Land of Yesterday—and Cecelia is left behind in a fractured world without him. Her beloved house’s spirit is crumbling beyond repair, her father is imprisoned by sorrow, and worst of all, her grief-stricken mother abandons the land of the living to follow Celadon into Yesterday. It’s up to Cecelia to put her family back together, even if that means venturing into the dark and forbidden Land of Yesterday on her own. But as Cecilia braves a hot-air balloon commanded by two gnomes, a sea of daisies, and the Planet of Nightmares, it’s clear that even if she finds her family, she might not be able to save them. And if she’s not careful, she might just become a lost soul herself, trapped forever in Yesterday.
When Israeli Nobel Laureate S. Y. Agnon published the novel Only Yesterday in 1945, it quickly became recognized as a major work of world literature, not only for its vivid historical reconstruction of Israel's founding society. The book tells a seemingly simple tale about a man who immigrates to Palestine with the Second Aliya--the several hundred idealists who returned between 1904 and 1914 to work the Hebrew soil as in Biblical times and revive Hebrew culture. This epic novel also engages the reader in a fascinating network of meanings, contradictions, and paradoxes all leading to the question, what, if anything, controls human existence? Seduced by Zionist slogans, young Isaac Kumer imagines the Land of Israel filled with the financial, social, and erotic opportunities that were denied him, the son of an impoverished shopkeeper, in Poland. Once there, he cannot find the agricultural work he anticipated. Instead Isaac happens upon house-painting jobs as he moves from secular, Zionist Jaffa, where the ideological fervor and sexual freedom are alien to him, to ultra-orthodox, anti-Zionist Jerusalem. While some of his Zionist friends turn capitalist, becoming successful merchants, his own life remains adrift and impoverished in a land torn between idealism and practicality, a place that is at once homeland and diaspora. Eventually he marries a religious woman in Jerusalem, after his worldly girlfriend in Jaffa rejects him. Led astray by circumstances, Isaac always ends up in the place opposite of where he wants to be, but why? The text soars to Surrealist-Kafkaesque dimensions when, in a playful mode, Isaac drips paint on a stray dog, writing "Crazy Dog" on his back. Causing panic wherever he roams, the dog takes over the story, until, after enduring persecution for so long without "understanding" why, he really does go mad and bites Isaac. The dog has been interpreted as everything from the embodiment of Exile to a daemonic force, and becomes an unforgettable character in a book about the death of God, the deception of discourse, the power of suppressed eroticism, and the destiny of a people depicted in all its darkness and promise.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Lay of the Land" by Dallas Lore Sharp. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
The bestselling author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel surveys the history of human societies to answer the question: What can we learn from traditional societies that can make the world a better place for all of us? “As he did in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond continues to make us think with his mesmerizing and absorbing new book." Bookpage Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. Provocative, enlightening, and entertaining, The World Until Yesterday is an essential and fascinating read.
"This Country of Ours" is a collection of extraordinary stories from the history of the United States beginning with accounts of exploration and settlement and ending with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. This is a book which when you lay it down will make you say, "I'm glad that I was born an American." Contents: Stories of Explorers and Pioneers How the Vikings of Old Sought and Found New Lands The Sea of Darkness and the Great Faith of Columbus How Columbus Fared Forth Upon the Sea of Darkness and Came to Pleasant Lands Beyond How Columbus Returned in Triumph How America Was Named How the Flag of England Was Planted on the Shores of the New World How the Flag of France Was Planted in Florida How the French Founded a Colony in Florida How the Spaniards Drove the French Out of Florida How a Frenchman Avenged the Death of His Countrymen The Adventures of Sir Humphrey Gilbert About Sir Walter Raleigh's Adventures in the Golden West Stories of Virginia The Adventures of Captain John Smith More Adventures of Captain John Smith How the Colony Was Saved How Pocahontas Took a Journey Over the Seas How the Redmen Fought Against Their White Brothers How Englishmen Fought a Duel With Tyranny The Coming of the Cavaliers Bacon's Rebellion The Story of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Stories of New England The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers The Founding of Massachusetts The Story of Harry Vane The Story of Anne Hutchinson and the Founding of Rhode Island The Founding of Harvard How Quakers First Came to New England How Maine and New Hampshire Were Founded The Founding of Connecticut and War With the Indians The Founding of New Haven The Hunt for the Regicides King Philip's War How the Charter of Connecticut Was Saved The Witches of Salem Stories of the Middle and Southern Colonies Stories of the French in America Stories of the Struggle for Liberty The Boston Tea-party Stories of the United States Under the Constitution
Austrian writer Stefan Zweig's final work, posted to his publisher the day before his tragic death, brings the destruction of a war-torn Europe vividly to life. Written as both a recollection of the past and a warning for future generations, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of literary Vienna; its seeming permanence, its promise, and its devastating fall. A truthful and passionate acc[Bokinfo].
This little book is confined to very simple “reading lessons upon the Form and Motions of the Earth, the Points of the Compass, the Meaning of a Map: Definitions.” The shape and motions of the earth are fundamental ideas—however difficult to grasp. Geography should be learned chiefly from maps, and the child should begin the study by learning “the meaning of map,” and how to use it. These subjects are well fitted to form an attractive introduction to the study of Geography: some of them should awaken the delightful interest which attaches in a child’s mind to that which is wonderful—incomprehensible. The Map lessons should lead to mechanical efforts, equally delightful. It is only when presented to the child for the first time in the form of stale knowledge and foregone conclusions that the facts taught in these lessons appear dry and repulsive to him. An effort is made in the following pages to treat the subject with the sort of sympathetic interest and freshness which attracts children to a new study. A short summary of the chief points in each reading lesson is given in the form of questions and answers. Easy verses, illustrative of the various subjects, are introduced, in order that the children may connect pleasant poetic fancies with the phenomena upon which “Geography” so much depends. It is hoped that these reading lessons may afford intelligent teaching, even in the hands of a young teacher. The first ideas of Geography—the lessons on “Place”—which should make the child observant of local geography, of the features of his own neighbourhood, its heights and hollows and level lands, its streams and ponds—should be conveyed viva voce. At this stage, a class-book cannot take the place of an intelligent teacher. Children should go through the book twice, and should, after the second reading, be able to answer any of the questions from memory. Charlotte M. Mason
Look for Amy Meyerson’s new novel The Imperfects, a captivating literary page-turner. THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Best Books of Summer 2018 Selection by Philadelphia Inquirer and Library Journal “Part mystery and part drama, Meyerson uses a complex family dynamic in The Bookshop of Yesterdays to spotlight the importance of truth and our need for forgiveness.” —Associated Press A woman inherits a beloved bookstore and sets forth on a journey of self-discovery in this poignant debut about family, forgiveness and a love of reading. Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric Uncle Billy’s bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda’s twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy—and one final scavenger hunt. When Miranda returns home to Los Angeles and to Prospero Books—now as its owner—she finds clues that Billy has hidden for her inside novels on the store’s shelves, in locked drawers of his apartment upstairs, in the name of the store itself. Miranda becomes determined to save Prospero Books and to solve Billy’s last scavenger hunt. She soon finds herself drawn into a journey where she meets people from Billy’s past, people whose stories reveal a history that Miranda’s mother has kept hidden—and the terrible secret that tore her family apart. Bighearted and trenchantly observant, The Bookshop of Yesterdays is a lyrical story of family, love and the healing power of community. It’s a love letter to reading and bookstores, and a testament to how our histories shape who we become.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A stunning novel that tells the powerful story of Ora, an Israli mother, and her extraordinary love for her son, Ofer, in a haunting meditation on war and family. “One of the few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.” —The New York Times Book Review Just before his release from service in the Israeli army, Ora’s son Ofer is sent back to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, so that no bad news can reach her, Ora sets out on an epic hike in the Galilee. She is joined by an unlikely companion—Avram, a former friend and lover with a troubled past—and as they sleep out in the hills, Ora begins to conjure her son. Ofer’s story, as told by Ora, becomes a surprising balm both for her and for Avram.
