'Exceptional' The Times 'Luminous . . . Unexpected' Guardian Shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, the Dalkey Literary Awards and the Kerry Group Awards Luke O’Brien has left Dublin to live a quiet life on the bend of the River Sullane. Alone in his big house, he longs for a return to his family’s heyday and turns to books for solace. One morning a young woman arrives at his door, presenting Luke and his family with an almost impossible dilemma.
Long lauded as a model of international cooperation, the Columbia River Treaty governs the storage and management of the waters of the upper Columbia River basin, a region rich in water resources, with a natural geography well suited to hydroelectric megaprojects. The Treaty also caused the displacement of over 2,000 residents of over a dozen communities, flooded and destroyed archaeological sites and up-ended once-healthy fisheries. The book begins with a review of key historical events that preceded the Treaty, including the Depression-era construction of Grand Coulee Dam in central Washington, a project that resulted in the extirpation of prolific runs of chinook, coho and sockeye into B.C. Prompted by concerns over the 1948 flood, American and Canadian political leaders began to focus their policy energy on governing the flow of the snow-charged Columbia to suit agricultural and industrial interests. Referring to national and provincial politics, First Nations history, and ecology, the narrative weaves from the present day to the past and back again in an engaging and unflinching examination of how and why Canada decided to sell water storage rights to American interests. The resulting Treaty flooded three major river valleys with four dams, all constructed in a single decade. At the heart of this survey of the Treaty and its impacts is the lack of consultation with local people. Those outside the region in urban areas or government benefited most. Those living in the region suffered the most losses. Specific stories of affected individuals are laced with accounts of betrayal, broken promises and unfair treatment, all of which serve as a reminder of the significant impact that policy, international agreements and corporate resource extraction can have on the individual’s ability to live a grounded life, in a particular place. Another little-known aspect of the Treaty’s history is the 1956 "extinction” of the Arrow Lakes Indians, or Sinixt, whose transboundary traditional territory once stretched from Washington State to the mountains above Revelstoke, B.C. Several thousand Sinixt today living south of the border have no rights or status in Canada, despite their inherent aboriginal rights to land that was given over by the Treaty to hydroelectric production and agricultural flood control. With one of the Treaty’s provisions set to expire in 2024, and with any changes to the treaty requiring a 10-year notice period, the question of whether or not to renew, renegotiate or terminate this water agreement is now being actively discussed by governments and policy makers. A River Captured surveys important history that can influence debate on who owns water, how water should be valued and whether or not rivers can be managed for non-human values such as fisheries, as well as the familiar call for more affordable electricity.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “It takes a rare individual not only to see that history can live, but also to make it live for others. James Thom has that gift.”—The Indianapolis News Mary Ingles was twenty-three, happily married, and pregnant with her third child when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement in 1755 and kidnapped her, leaving behind a bloody massacre. For months they held her captive. But nothing could imprison her spirit. With the rushing Ohio River as her guide, Mary Ingles walked one thousand miles through an untamed wilderness no white woman had ever seen. Her story lives on—extraordinary testimony to the indomitable strength of one pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her own people.
A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely—a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess from her girlhood in western Ireland through her relocation to America and her life there, concluding with a moving reencounter with her Irish family after forty years of exile. The novel has a hypnotic pull and a steadily mounting emotional force. It speaks of disappointments but also of great joy. It shows how the signal events of the last half century affect the course of a life lived in New York City. Anne Enright has said that Costello's first collection of stories, The China Factory, "has the feel of work that refused to be abandoned; of stories that were written for the sake of getting something important right . . . Her writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand" (The Guardian). Academy Street is driven by this same urgency. In sentence after sentence it captures the rhythm and intensity of inner life.
"Investigates the so-called 'Battle of Pease River' and December 1860 capture of Cynthia Ann Parker, contending that what became, in Texans' collective memory, a battle that broke Comanche military power was actually a massacre, mainly of women. Questions traditional knowledge and historiographic interpretations of the history of Texas"--Provided by publisher.
“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests. But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests. Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.
Describes an incident in the life of John Parker, an ex-slave who became a successful businessman in Ripley, Ohio, and who repeatedly risked his life to help other slaves escape to freedom.
A young Indian woman, accompanied by her infant and her cruel husband, experiences joy and heartbreak when she joins the Lewis and Clark expedition seeking a way to the Pacific.
In 1987 photographer Sandra Dyas moved to Iowa City and began documenting the area's vibrant live music scene, with its distinctive combination of folk, blues, roots/Americana, and rock sounds. The sixty photos in Down to the River capture her twenty years of photographing live music venues and shooting portraits of musicians in and around the city, resulting in a collection of images as compassionate and honest as the music itself. Dyas's photographs present both the sweaty intensity of live performances and the more contemplative moments of individual portraits. They are complemented by Chris Offutt's empathetic essay, which also encapsulates the experience of connecting with a new home through its music. A companion CD with eighteen tracks by Iowa's finest singer/songwriters, including Dave Moore, Greg Brown, Bo Ramsey, David Zollo, and Pieta Brown, add up to an unmatched perspective on Iowa music and musicians. CD Tracks 1. Iowa Crawl, Joe Price 2. Poor Back Slider, Greg Brown 3. Parnell, David Zollo 4. #807, Pieta Brown 5. Wheels of Steel, Radoslav Lorkovic 6. Down to the River, Dave Moore 7. Lucy and Andy Drive to Arkansas, Kevin Gordon 8. Chuck Brown, Mike and Amy Finders 9. Nobody But You, Joe Price 10. Earleton, BeJae Fleming 11. Ceremonial Child, High and Lonesome 12. Sidetrack Lounge, Bo Ramsey 13. On the Edge, Pieta Brown 14. One Wrong Turn, Greg Brown 15. Not in Iowa, Kelly Pardekooper 16. Living in a Cornfield, Bo Ramsey 17. '57 Chevy, Tom Jessen's Dimestore Outfit 18. Roll on John, the Pines
From the acclaimed author of Floating in My Mother’s Palm and Children and Fire, a stunning story about ordinary people living in extraordinary times—“epic, daring, magnificent, the product of a defining and mesmerizing vision” (Los Angeles Times). Trudi Montag is a Zwerg—a dwarf—short, undesirable, different, the voice of anyone who has ever tried to fit in. Eventually she learns that being different is a secret that all humans share—from her mother who flees into madness, to her friend Georg whose parents pretend he’s a girl, to the Jews Trudi harbors in her cellar. Ursula Hegi brings us a timeless and unforgettable story in Trudi and a small town, weaving together a profound tapestry of emotional power, humanity, and truth.
