Winner of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award Honorable Mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award "F. Scott Fitzgerald meets Wes Anderson" (The Village Voice) in this inventive and witty debut about a young man’s quest to become a writer and the misadventures in life and love that take him around the globe—from the author of Why We Came to the City As early as he can remember, the narrator of this remarkable novel has wanted to become a writer. From the jazz clubs of Manhattan to the villages of Sri Lanka, Kristopher Jansma’s hopelessly unreliable—yet hopelessly earnest—narrator will be haunted by the success of his greatest friend and literary rival, the brilliant Julian McGann, and endlessly enamored with Evelyn, the green-eyed girl who got away. A profound exploration of the nature of truth and storytelling, this delightful picaresque tale heralds Jansma as a bold, new American voice.
This is THE book on anger, the first book to explain exactly why we get mad, what anger really is - and how to cope with and use it. Often confused with hostility and violence, anger is fundamentally different from these aggressive behaviours and in fact can be a healthy and powerful force in our lives. What is anger? Who is allowed to be angry? How can we manage our anger? How can we use it? It might seem like a day doesn't go by without some troubling explosion of anger, whether we're shouting at the kids, or the TV, or the driver ahead who's slowing us down. In this book, the first of its kind, Dr. Ryan Martin draws on 20 years plus of research, as well as his own childhood experience of an angry parent, to take an all-round view on this often-challenging emotion. It explains exactly what anger is, why we get angry, how our anger hurts us as well as those around us, and how we can manage our anger and even channel it into positive change. It also explores how race and gender shape society's perceptions of who is allowed to get angry. Dr. Martin offers questionnaires, emotion logs, control techniques and many other tools to help readers understand better what pushes their buttons and what to do with angry feelings when they arise. It shows how to differentiate good anger from bad anger, and reframe anger from being a necessarily problematic experience in our lives to being a fuel that energizes us to solve problems, release our creativity and confront injustice.
An exposé on Big Pharma and the American healthcare system’s zeal for excessive medical testing, from a nationally recognized expert More screening doesn’t lead to better health—but can turn healthy people into patients. Going against the conventional wisdom reinforced by the medical establishment and Big Pharma that more screening is the best preventative medicine, Dr. Gilbert Welch builds a compelling counterargument that what we need are fewer, not more, diagnoses. Documenting the excesses of American medical practice that labels far too many of us as sick, Welch examines the social, ethical, and economic ramifications of a health-care system that unnecessarily diagnoses and treats patients, most of whom will not benefit from treatment, might be harmed by it, and would arguably be better off without screening. Drawing on 25 years of medical practice and research on the effects of medical testing, Welch explains in a straightforward, jargon-free style how the cutoffs for treating a person with “abnormal” test results have been drastically lowered just when technological advances have allowed us to see more and more “abnormalities,” many of which will pose fewer health complications than the procedures that ostensibly cure them. Citing studies that show that 10% of 2,000 healthy people were found to have had silent strokes, and that well over half of men over age sixty have traces of prostate cancer but no impairment, Welch reveals overdiagnosis to be rampant for numerous conditions and diseases, including diabetes, high cholesterol, osteoporosis, gallstones, abdominal aortic aneuryisms, blood clots, as well as skin, prostate, breast, and lung cancers. With genetic and prenatal screening now common, patients are being diagnosed not with disease but with “pre-disease” or for being at “high risk” of developing disease. Revealing the economic and medical forces that contribute to overdiagnosis, Welch makes a reasoned call for change that would save us from countless unneeded surgeries, excessive worry, and exorbitant costs, all while maintaining a balanced view of both the potential benefits and harms of diagnosis. Drawing on data, clinical studies, and anecdotes from his own practice, Welch builds a solid, accessible case against the belief that more screening always improves health care.
PORCHLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 2022 NONFICTION BESTSELLER “I can see this book helping estranged parties who are equally invested in bridging a gap—it could be assigned reading for fractured families aspiring to a harmonious Thanksgiving dinner.” —New York Times “Like all skills, these techniques take practice. But anyone who sincerely wants to bridge the gaps in understanding will appreciate this book. Guzmán is emphatic about making an effort to work on difficult conversations.” —Manhattan Book Review We think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted—twice—for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we’re not using: our own built-in curiosity. Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we’re right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding one another is hurting our relationships and our society. In this timely, personal guide, Mónica, the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt—broken conversations among confounded people. She shows you how to overcome the fear and certainty that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is different from or even opposed to yours. Drawing from cross-partisan conversations she’s had, organized, or witnessed everywhere from the echo chambers on social media to the wheat fields in Oregon to raw, unfiltered fights with her own family on election night, Mónica shows how you can put your natural sense of wonder to work for you immediately, finding the answers you need by talking with people—rather than about them—and asking the questions you want, curiously. In these pages, you’ll learn: How to ask what you really want to know (even if you’re afraid to) How to grow smarter from even the most tense interactions, online or off How to cross boundaries and find common ground—with anyone Whether you’re left, right, center, or not a fan of labels: If you’re ready to fight back against the confusion, heartbreak, and madness of our dangerously divided times—in your own life, at least—Mónica’s got the tools and fresh, surprising insights to prove that seeing where people are coming from isn’t just possible. It’s easier than you think.
Laurell K. Hamiltons Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series is a literary sensation, thanks to its strong female hero, well-fleshed (both literally and literarily) characters and unabashed attitude toward sex. The world Hamilton has created is powerfu...
Raymond Williams’s work was always concerned with the relation between culture and society. This book focuses on specific texts and authors, exploring the historical and cultural sources of their particular forms of writing. In it, Williams examines dramatic form and language in Racine and Shakespeare; the politics of fiction in the English Jacobin novel; David Hume and Charles Dickens and the changing characteristics of English prose; Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, and the role of region and class in the English novel. Also included are Williams’s reflections on the rise of English studies, on their crisis as the literary traditions of Cambridge University were beset by the ‘structuralist controversy’, and on the wider implications of this redefinition of the critical field.
"Hannah Proctor takes that feeling we all have, and names it again and again, helping us to resee the past and present of revolutionary struggle. A must-read." –Hannah Zeavin, Founding Editor, Parapraxis How to maintain hope in the face of despair In the struggle for a better world, setbacks are inevitable. Defeat can feel overwhelming at times, but it has to be endured. How then do the people on the front line keep going? To answer that question and to help readers roll with the punches, Hannah Proctor draws on historical resources to find out how revolutionaries and activists of the past kept a grip on hope. Burnout considers former Communards exiled to a penal colony in the South Pacific; a young Bolshevik fleeing the city in despair; an ex-militant on the analyst’s couch relating dreams of ruined landscapes; a trade union organiser seeking advice from a spiritual healer; and a group of feminists padding a room with mattresses to scream about the patriarchy. Jettisoning therapy talk and its stranglehold on our language, Proctor offers a different way forward - neither denial nor despair. Her cogent exploration of the ways militants make sense of their own burnout demonstrates that it is possible to mourn and organise at once, and to do both without compromise.
“Reading this courageous book feels like the beginning of a social and personal awakening...I can’t stop thinking about it.”—Brené Brown, PhD, author of Atlas of the Heart For readers of Emergent Strategy and Dare to Lead, an activist's roadmap to long-term social justice impact through four simple shifts. We need a fundamental shift in our values--a pivot in how we think, act, work, and connect. Despite what we’ve been told, the most critical mainspring of social change isn’t coalition building or problem analysis. It’s healing: deep, whole, and systemic, inside and out. Here, Shawn Ginwright, PhD, breaks down the common myths of social movements--a set of deeply ingrained beliefs that actually hold us back from healing and achieving sustainable systemic change. He shows us why these frames don’t work, proposing instead four revolutionary pivots for better activism and collective leadership: Awareness: from lens to mirror Connection: from transactional to transformative relationships Vision: from problem-fixing to possibility-creating Presence: from hustle to flow Supplemented with reflections, prompts, cutting-edge research, and the author’s own insights and lived experience as an African American social scientist, professor, and movement builder, The Four Pivots helps us uncover our obstruction points. It shows us how to discover new lenses and boldly assert our need for connection, transformation, trust, wholeness, and healing. It gives us permission to create a better future--to acknowledge that a broken system has been predefining our dreams and limiting what we allow ourselves to imagine, but that it doesn’t have to be that way at all. Are you ready to pivot?
Vinny Guadagnino, star of Jersey Shore, discusses his lifelong struggle to control the effects of social anxiety and stress, and teaches readers the tools and techniques he's used to stay calm and maintain his sanity in all types of crazy situations--both on and off the show. For more than a decade Vinny has been keeping a secret from his family, his friends, his castmates, and his fans: the fact that he's not as carefree and stress-free as he appears. Vinny suffers from panic attacks that strike without warning. They plagued him throughout his teens, forced him to move home from college, and tormented him during the first season of Jersey Shore. After fleeing the set during the filming of the fifth season of the show, Vinny realized he could no longer keep his problems to himself. It was time to speak out. In this book, Vinny discusses how he's confronted his demons head on, and he gives readers the tools to do so themselves. For the millions of his fans who are also feeling overwhelmed with the world around them and by their own thoughts, Vinny offers a practical plan for taking control of your life, your body, and your mind.
