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Nonfiction
"A rare voice, someone who challenges orthodoxies in the way that many journalists and public intellectuals claim to do but don't. It is bracing to spend time in the company of such a smart, plain-spoken and unpredictable person."--Wall Street Journal
A striking collection of essays from the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Should We Stay or Should We Go, So Much for That, and The Post-Birthday World.
Novelist, cultural observer, and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces "under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous" points of view, she filets cherished shibboleths and the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken us.
Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator, the Guardian, the New York Times, Harper's Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces, Abominations reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly skeptical, cutting, and contrarian, this collection showcases Shriver's piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care, and taxes.
In her characteristically frank manner, Shriver shrewdly skewers the concept of language "crimes," while chafing at arbitrary limitations on speech and literature that crimp artistic expression and threaten intellectual freedom. Many an essay in Abominations reflects sentiments that have "brought hell and damnation down on my head," as she cheerfully explains, and have threatened her with "cancellation" more than once.
Throughout, Shriver offers insights on her novels and explores the perks and pitfalls of becoming a successful artist. In revisiting old pieces and rejected essays, Shriver updates and expands her thinking. "Enlightened" progressive readers will find plenty to challenge here. But they may find, to their surprise, insights with which they agree.
A timely synthesis of Shriver's expansive work, Abominations reveals this provocative, talented writer at her most assured.
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR In her most urgent book yet, New York Times bestselling author Jessica Valenti shines a light on the conservative assault on women's freedom, cutting through the misinformation and overwhelm to inform, engage, and enrage. From the attacks Americans know about to the ones anti-abortion lawmakers and groups are trying to hide, Valenti details the tactics and horrors that she's been painstakingly tracking in her acclaimed newsletter, Abortion, Every Day. Abortion gives voice to women's frustration and outrage in a moment when they're fed up with being talked over and diminished. And in an election year when abortion is dominating the national conversation, Valenti provides the language, facts, and context readers need to feel confident when talking about the attacks on their bodies and freedom. Abortion is a handbook for the overwhelming majority of Americans who support abortion rights, whether they're seasoned activists or those just starting to learn. With the wit, expertise, and blunt moral clarity that's made her writing popular for decades, Valenti offers an essential manifesto in an urgent moment.
"In her role as author and activist, Jennifer Baumgardner has permanently changed the way people think about feminism . . . and will shape the next hundred years of politics and culture." --The Commonwealth Club of California, hailing Baumgardner as one of Six Visionaries for the Twenty-First Century
In Abortion & Life, author and activist Jennifer Baumgardner reveals how the most controversial and stigmatized Supreme Court decision of our time cuts across eras, classes, and race. Stunning portraits by photographer Tara Todras-Whitehill of folk singer Ani DiFranco, authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Gloria Steinem, and others accompany their elucidating accounts of their own abortion experiences.
In this bold new work, Baumgardner explores some of the thorniest issues around terminating a pregnancy, including the ones that the pro-choice establishment has been the least sensitive or effective in confronting.
Abortion Under Attack addresses a spectrum of personal and social influences, ranging from dealing with remorse to the impact that economics, race, and culture have on a woman's right to choose. Krista Jacob, longtime advocate for reproductive rights and former abortion counselor, has compiled an impressive collection of writings by a diverse group of pro-choice activists who go beyond the same old analysis of reproductive rights to present the current issues facing the pro-choice movement. Feminist activist Amy Richards challenges supporters of reproductive rights to adopt language that strips conservatives of their moral authority as defenders of life. Author Laura Fraser writes about the dangers of a government that restricts Mifepristone, a drug that has proven effective in treating fibroids, endometriosis, and depression, because of its controversial use in terminating pregnancies. Gloria Feldt, the former President of Planned Parenthood, writes about how her personal experiences led to her role as a leader in the fight for reproductive justice, and offers strategies for preserving legal abortion.
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When John D'Agata helps his mother move to Las Vegas one summer, he begins to follow a story about the federal government's plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain; the result is a startling portrait that compels a reexamination of the future of human life.
Yet as the contradictions inherent in Yucca's story are revealed, D'Agata's investigation turns inevitably personal. He finds himself investigating the death of a teenager who jumps off the tower of the Stratosphere Hotel, a boy whom D'Agata believes he spoke with before his suicide.
Here is the work of a penetrating thinker whose startling portrait of a mountain in the desert compels a reexamination of the future of human life.
In About Face, twenty-five writers tackle this question, each using the same simple framework of an opening paragraph that objectively considers what they see when they look in the mirror. Each writer then details an experience that transpired, in one way or another, because of the face they live with: a feature that belies a woman's heritage, a scar that serves as a daily reminder of a childhood tragedy, an unwanted change due to sun exposure or smoking or drinking.
Since we live our entire lives behind our faces, About Face presents a challenge: to consider exploring our experiences from a vantage point we simply don't have access to. This collection uncovers surprising outcomes and truly unique observations about internal experiences as witnessed from the writers' external points of view.
Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are--not as others perceive them--About Us captures the voices of a community that has for too long been stereotyped and misrepresented. Speaking not only to those with disabilities, but also to their families, coworkers and support networks, the authors in About Us offer intimate stories of how they navigate a world not built for them.
Since its 2016 debut, the popular New York Times' "Disability" column has transformed the national dialogue around disability. Now, echoing the refrain of the disability rights movement, "Nothing about us without us," this landmark collection gathers the most powerful essays from the series that speak to the fullness of human experience--stories about first romance, childhood shame and isolation, segregation, professional ambition, child-bearing and parenting, aging and beyond.
Reflecting on the fraught conversations around disability--from the friend who says "I don't think of you as disabled," to the father who scolds his child with attention differences, "Stop it stop it stop it what is wrong with you?"--the stories here reveal the range of responses, and the variety of consequences, to being labeled as "disabled" by the broader public.
Here, a writer recounts her path through medical school as a wheelchair user--forging a unique bridge between patients with disabilities and their physicians. An acclaimed artist with spina bifida discusses her art practice as one that invites us to "stretch ourselves toward a world where all bodies are exquisite." With these notes of triumph, these stories also offer honest portrayals of frustration over access to medical care, the burden of social stigma and the nearly constant need to self-advocate in the public realm.
In its final sections, About Us turns to the questions of love, family and joy to show how it is possible to revel in life as a person with disabilities. Subverting the pervasive belief that disability results in relentless suffering and isolation, a quadriplegic writer reveals how she rediscovered intimacy without touch, and a mother with a chronic illness shares what her condition has taught her young children.
With a foreword by Andrew Solomon and introductory comments by co-editors Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, About Us is a landmark publication of the disability movement for readers of all backgrounds, forms and abilities.
Featuring Essays from: John Altmann - Todd Balf - Jennifer Bartlett - Emily Rapp Black - Sheila Black - Sasha Blair-Goldensohn - Cheri A. Blauwet - Molly McCully Brown - Joseph P. Carter - Peter Catapano - Randi Davenport - Luticha Doucette - Anne Finger - Joseph J. Fins - Shane Fistell - Paula M. Fitzgibbons - Kenny Fries - Rosemarie Garland-Thomson - Jenny Giering - Ona Gritz - Elizabeth Guffey - Jane Eaton Hamilton - Ariel Henle - Edward Hoagland - Alex Hubbard - Liz Jackson - Elizabeth Jameson - Cyndi Jones - Anne Kaier - Georgina Kleege - Rachel Kolb - Elliott Kukla - Catherine Kudlick - Emily Ladau - Laurie Clements Lambeth - Alaina Leary - Riva Lehrer - Gila Lyons - Ben Mattlin - Zack McDermott - Catherine Monahon - Jonathan Mooney - Susannah Nevison - Joanna Novak - Valerie Piro - Oliver Sacks - Katie Savin - Melissa Shang - Alice Sheppard - Daniel Simpson - Brad Snyder - Andrew Solomon - Rivers Solomon - Carol R. Steinberg - Jillian Weise - Abby L. Wilkerson - Alice Wong"Kilian Jornet is the most dominating endurance athlete of his generation."--NEW YORK TIMES
"Inspiring and humbling"-- ALEX HONNOLD
The most accomplished mountain runner of all time contemplates his record-breaking climbs of Mount Everest in this profound memoir--an intellectual and spiritual journey that moves from the earth's highest peak to the soul's deepest reaches.
Kilian Jornet has broken nearly every mountaineering record in the world and twice been named National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. In 2018 he summitted Mount Everest twice in one week--without the help of bottled oxygen or ropes.
As he recounts a life spent studying and ascending the greatest peaks on earth, Jornet ruminates on what he has found in nature--simplicity, freedom, and spiritual joy--and offers a poetic yet clearheaded assessment of his relationship to the mountain . . . at times his opponent, at others, his greatest inspiration.
The collection is divided into five sections: "Back," about her family and her past; "Underfoot," about being a mom; "In the Mirror," about growing older; "Above us Only Sky," about a key turning point in her life, and "Ahead," about facing the future."