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The long-awaited return of a quintessentially American storyteller"You're as likely to be hit twice by lightning on a Monday as see a wood chipper pull a man into its maw."So begins North of Ordinary, John Rolfe Gardner's virtuosic story collection of survivors getting by despite the odds in a shifting world. In these pages, we meet a nervous young apprentice to a weathered tree climber; a dangerously obsessed student at a Southern Bible college; an attractive schemer trying to build an audience for her tiny radio station; an undercover, cross-dressing lawman whose friendship changes the life of a deaf child in a suburban cul-de-sac; and an elderly Black mason whose knowledge of the town's history harbors truths that shake his visitor's foundation.Surprising, touching, and deeply humane, the ten stories of North of Ordinary offer an intimate, revelatory look at our fractured society and pull us together through the power of art.

An impassioned meditation on American identity and its ebb and flow through the Capital’s great waterwayAs she walks the length of the Potomac River, clambering up its banks and sounding its depths, Charlotte Taylor Fryar examines the geography and ecology of Washington, D.C. with all manner of flora and fauna as her witness. The ecological traces of human inhabitancy provide her with imaginative access into America’s past, for her true subject is the origin of our splintered nation and racially divided capital.From the gentrified neighborhood of Shaw to George Washington’s slave labor camp at Mount Vernon, Potomac Fever maps the troubled histories of the United States by leading us along the less-trafficked trails and side streets of our capital city, steeped in the legacy of white supremacy and colonialism. In the end, Fryar offers hope for how “we might grow a society guided by the ethics and values of the places we live.”A compelling synthesis of historical, environmental, and personal narrative, Potomac Fever exposes the roots of our national myths, awash in the waters of America’s renowned river.

"Oliver Fischer, a self-styled bohemian, boardwalk caricaturist, and student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, enrages his banker father and earns the contempt of Philadelphia's foremost realist painter Thomas Eakins when he attempts to stage Manet's scandalous painting The Luncheon on the Grass. Soon after, he is ensnarled, along with Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, in a clash between the Anti-Imperialist League and their expansionist foes. Sent to Key West to sketch the 1898 American invasion of Cuba, in company with war correspondent Stephen Crane, he realizes - in the flash of a naval bombardment - that our lives are suspended by a thread between radiance and annihilation. The Caricaturist, the penultimate, stand-alone book in The American Novels series, is a tragicomic portrait of America struggling to honor its most-cherished ideals at the dawn of the twentieth century"--

Engaging, funny, and unflinching essays about coming of age as a transplant patient and living each day as a giftAdina Talve-Goodman was born with a congenital heart condition and survived multiple operations over the course of her childhood, including a heart transplant at age nineteen. In these seven essays, she tells the story of her chronic illness and her youthful search for love and meaning, never forgetting that her adult life is tied to the loss of another personthe donor of her transplanted heart.Whether writing about the experience of taking her old heart home from the hospital (and passing it around the Thanksgiving table), a summer camp for young transplant patients, or a memorable night on the town, Talve-Goodmans writing is filled with curiosity, humor, and compassion. Published posthumously, Your Hearts, Your Scars is the work of a writer wise beyond her years, a moving reflection on chance and gratitude, and a testament to hope and kindness.

There is a wonderfully weird but real world out there, and we are a part of it. It is time for physics to take life seriously.Can we ever truly comprehend the universe before we fully understand consciousness and the wonders, and limits, of the mind? Ulf Danielsson, an acclaimed theoretical physicist who has dedicated his career to probing the deepest mysteries of nature, thinks not. As he dismantles the arguments of esteemed mathematicians and scientists, who would substitute their mathematical models for reality and equate the mind to a computer, he makes a lucid and passionate case that it is nature, full of beauty and meaning, which must compel us. In challenging established worldviews, he also takes a fresh look at major philosophical debates, including the notion of free will.Fearless, provocative, and witty, The World Itself is essential reading for anyone curious about the profound questions surrounding life, the universe, and everything.

A virtuosic debut from a gifted violinist searching for a new mode of artistic becomingHow does time shape consciousness and consciousness, time? Do we live in time, or does time live in us? And how does music, with its patterns of rhythm and harmony, inform our experience of time?Uncommon Measure explores these questions from the perspective of a young Korean American who dedicated herself to perfecting her art until performance anxiety forced her to give up the dream of becoming a concert solo violinist. Anchoring her story in illuminating research in neuroscience and quantum physics, Hodges traces her own passage through difficult family dynamics, prejudice, and enormous personal expectations to come to terms with the meaning of a life reimaginedone still shaped by classical music but moving toward the freedom of improvisation.Natalie Hodges has performed as a classical violinist throughout Colorado and in New York, Boston, Paris, and the Italian Piedmont, as well as at the Aspen Music Festival and the Stowe Tango Music Festival. She graduated from Harvard University, where she studied English and music, and lives in Denver, Colorado. Uncommon Measure is her first book.

In a fusion of fact and fiction, nineteenth-century women institutionalized as hysterics reveal what history ignoredCity of Incurable Women is a brilliant exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteriaand the curiously hysterical response to it commonly exhibited by medical men. It is a novel of powerful originality, riveting historical interest, and haunting lyrical beauty. Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and What Are You Going ThroughWhere are the hysterics, those magnificent women of former times? wrote Jacques Lacan. Long historys ghosts, marginalized and dispossessed due to their gender and class, they are reimagined by Maud Casey as complex, flesh-and-blood people with stories to tell. These linked, evocative prose portraits, accompanied by period photographs and medical documents both authentic and invented, poignantly restore the humanity to the nineteenth-century female psychiatric patients confined in Pariss Salptrire hospital and reduced to specimens for study by the celebrated neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his male colleagues.Maud Casey is the author of five books of fiction, including The Man Who Walked Away, and a work of nonfiction, The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions. A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the St. Francis College Literary Prize, she teaches at the University of Maryland.

Four seasons of immersion in New Englands Great MarshLike Wendell Berry and Rachel Carson, Hanlon is a true poet-ecologist, sharing in exquisitely resonant prose her patient observations of natures most intimate details. As she and her husband, through summer and snow, swim their local creeks and estuaries, we marvel at the timeless yet fragile terrain of both marshlands and marriage. This is the book to awaken all of us, right now, to how our coastline is changing and what it means for our future. Julia Glass, author of Three Junes and A House Among the TreesThe Great Marsh is the largest continuous stretch of salt marsh in New England, extending from Cape Ann to New Hampshire. Patricia Hanlon and her husband built their home and raised their children alongside it. But it is not until the children are grown that they begin to swim the tidal estuary daily. Immersing herself, she experiences, with all her senses in all seasons, the vigor of a place where the two ecosystems of fresh and salt water mix, merge, and create new life.In Swimming to the Top of the Tide, Hanlon lyrically charts her explorations, at once intimate and scientific. Noting the disruptions caused by human intervention, she bears witness to the vitality of the watersheds, their essential role in the natural world, and the responsibility of those who love them to contribute to their sustainability.Patricia Hanlon is a visual artist who paints the beautiful ecosystem of New Englands Great Marsh and is involved in the watershed organizations of Greater Boston. Swimming to the Top of the Tide is her first book.

Comedy and tragedy collide in stories of family life in Soviet Russia and the complexities of the immigrant experience.

The aesthetic adventures of a mad mushroom hunter

A masterpiece of eco-fiction from an acclaimed German author making his English-language debut

An intimate and revelatory voyage through pain and perception, pop culture and personal experience

John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Book WinnerNew Mexico-Arizona Book Award WinnerKirkus Reviews "e;Best Book of the Year"e; selection"e;A richly literary account. . . . Anchored by deep reflection and scientific knowledge, A Wilder Time is a portrait of an ancient, nearly untrammeled world that holds the secrets of our planet's deepest past, even as it accelerates into our rapidly changing future. The book bears the literary, scientific, philosophic, and poetic qualities of a nature-writing classic, the rarest mixture of beauty and scholarship, told with the deftest touch."e; -John Burroughs Medal judges' citationGreenland, one of the last truly wild places, contains a treasure trove of information on Earth's early history embedded in its pristine landscape. Over numerous seasons, William E. Glassley and two fellow geologists traveled there to collect samples and observe rock formations for evidence to prove a contested theory that plate tectonics, the movement of Earth's crust over its molten core, is a much more ancient process than some believed. As their research drove the scientists ever farther into regions barely explored by humans for millennia-if ever-Glassley encountered wondrous creatures and natural phenomena that gave him unexpected insight into the origins of myth, the virtues and boundaries of science, and the importance of seeking the wilderness within.An invitation to experience a breathtaking place and the fascinating science behind its creation, A Wilder Time is nature writing at its best.William E. Glassley is a geologist at the University of California, Davis, and an emeritus researcher at Aarhus University, Denmark, focusing on the evolution of continents and the processes that energize them. He is the author of over seventy research articles and a textbook on geothermal energy. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

[Kramers body of work is] precise and sumptuous . . . a song of emotion, but with a great lucidity about the humanity of simple people. Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Swiss Grand Prize for Literature citationYou need to read Pascale Kramers books because they take you on a journey. You board a small ship that enters the human body, and what you felt while reading follows you for days after youve closed the book. Elle (France)Restrained, chiseled, implacable, the novels of Pascale Kramer perfectly master the art of creating a diffuse discomfort. Poignant. Marie Claire (Switzerland)When a young woman returns to her childhood home after her estranged fathers death, she begins to piece together the final years of his life. What changed him from a prominent left-wing journalist to a bitter racist who defended the murder of a defenseless African immigrant? Kramer exposes a country gripped by intolerance and violence to unearth the source of a familys fall from grace.Set in Paris and its suburbs, and inspired by the real-life scandal of a French author and intellectual, Autopsy of a Father blends sharp observations about familial dynamics with resonant political and philosophical questions, taking a scalpel to the racism and anti-immigrant sentiment spreading just beneath the skin of modern society.Pascale Kramer, recipient of the 2017 Swiss Grand Prize for Literature, is the author of fourteen books, including three novels published in English: The Living, The Child, and Autopsy of a Father, which was named a finalist for the La Closerie des Lilas, Ouest-France, and Orange du Livre prizes. Born in Geneva, she has worked in Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris, where she directs a documentary film festival about childrens rights.

"e;Superb."e; -Steven Pinker"e;An explanation, a defense, and, most heartening, a celebration. . . . McWhorter demonstrates the 'legitimacy' of Black English by uncovering its complexity and sophistication, as well as the still unfolding journey that has led to its creation. . . . [His] intelligent breeziness is the source of the book's considerable charm."e; -New Yorker"e;Talking Back, Talking Black is [McWhorter's] case for the acceptance of black English as a legitimate American dialect. . . . He ably and enthusiastically breaks down the mechanics."e; -New York Times Book ReviewLinguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound "e;black."e; In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect.Talking Back, Talking Black takes us on a fascinating tour of a nuanced and complex language that has moved beyond America's borders to become a dynamic force for today's youth culture around the world.John McWhorter teaches linguistics, Western civilization, music history, and American studies at Columbia University. A New York Times best-selling author and TED speaker, he is a columnist for CNN.com, a regular contributor to the Atlantic, a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC, and the host of Slate's language podcast, Lexicon Valley. His books on language include The Power of Babel; Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue; Words on the Move; Talking Back, Talking Black; and The Creole Debate.

PEN/ Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography LonglistO, The Oprah Magazine Best Books of Summer selectionMagnetic nonfiction. O, The Oprah MagazineRemarkable insight . . . [a] unique meditation/investigation. . . . Jerome Charyn the unpredictable, elusive, and enigmatic is a natural match for Emily Dickinson, the quintessence of these. Joyce Carol Oates, author of Wild Nights! and The Lost LandscapeWe think we know Emily Dickinson: the Belle of Amherst, virginal, reclusive, and possibly mad. But in A Loaded Gun, Jerome Charyn introduces us to a different Emily Dickinson: the fierce, brilliant, and sexually charged poet who wrote:My Life had stooda Loaded GunThough I than He may longer liveHe longer mustthan IFor I have but the power to kill,Withoutthe power to dieThrough interviews with contemporary scholars, close readings of Dickinsons correspondence and handwritten manuscripts, and a suggestive, newly discovered photograph that is purported to show Dickinson with her lover, Charyns literary sleuthing reveals the great poet in ways that have only been hinted at previously: as a woman who was deeply philosophical, intensely engaged with the world, attracted to members of both sexes, and able to write poetry that disturbs and delights us today.Jerome Charyn is the author of, most recently, Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories, I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War, and The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel. He lives in New York.

A fascinating history of a public health crisis. Compellingly written and insightful, Keep Out of Reach of Children traces the discovery of Reyes syndrome, research into its causes, industrys efforts to avoid warning labels on one suspected cause, aspirin, and the feared diseases sudden disappearance. Largents empathy is with the myriad children and parents harmed by the disease, while he challenges the triumphalist view that labeling solved the crisis. ERIK M. CONWAY, coauthor of Merchants of DoubtLargents engaging and honest account explores how medical mysteries are shaped by prevailing narratives about venal drug companies, heroic investigators, and Johnny-come-lately politicians. HELEN EPSTEIN, author of The Invisible CureFascinating. . . . Thought-provoking. BooklistWell-researched. . . . A revealing work. Kirkus ReviewsReyes syndrome, identified in 1963, was a debilitating, rare condition that typically afflicted healthy children just emerging from the flu or other minor illnesses. It began with vomiting, followed by confusion, coma, and in 50 percent of all cases, death. Survivors were often left with permanent liver or brain damage. Desperate, terrorized parents and doctors pursued dramatic, often ineffectual treatments. For over fifteen years, many inconclusive theories were posited as to its causes. The Centers for Disease Control dispatched its Epidemic Intelligence Service to investigate, culminating in a study that suggested a link to aspirin. Congress held hearings at which parents, researchers, and pharmaceutical executives testified. The result was a warning to parents and doctors to avoid pediatric use of aspirin, leading to the widespread substitution of alternative fever and pain reducers. But before a true cause was definitively established, Reyes syndrome simply vanished.A harrowing medical mystery, Keep Out of Reach of Children is the first and only book to chart the history of Reyes syndrome and reveal the confluence of scientific and social forces that determined the public health policy response, for better or for ill.Mark A. Largent, a survivor of Reyes syndrome, is the author of Vaccine: The Debate in Modern America and Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States. He is a historian of science, Associate Professor in James Madison College at Michigan State University, and Associate Dean in Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University. He lives in Lansing, Michigan.

"e;[Norman Lock's fiction] shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights."e; -NPRHuck Finn and Jim float on their raft across a continuum of shifting seasons, feasting on a limitless supply of fish and stolen provisions, propelled by the currents of the mighty Mississippi from one adventure to the next. Launched into existence by Mark Twain, they have now been transported by Norman Lock through three vital, violent, and transformative centuries of American history. As time unfurls on the river's banks, they witness decisive battles of the Civil War, the betrayal of Reconstruction's promises to the freed slaves, the crushing of Native American nations, and the electrification of a continent. While Jim enters real time when he disembarks the raft in the Jim Crow South, Huck finally comes of age when he's washed up on shore during Hurricane Katrina. An old man in 2077, Huck takes stock of his life and narrates his own story, revealing our nation's past, present, and future as Mark Twain could never have dreamed it.The first stand-alone book in The American Novels series, The Boy in His Winter is a tour-de-force work of imagination, beauty, and courage that re-envisions a great American literary classic for our time.Norman Lock is the award-winning author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, where he is at work on the next books of The American Novels series.

One of the most important thinkers describes the literally mind-boggling possibilities that modern brain science could present for national security. LAWRENCE J. KORB, former US Assistant Secretary of DefenseFascinating and frightening. Bulletin of the Atomic ScientistsThe first book of its kind, Mind Wars covers the ethical dilemmas and bizarre history of cutting-edge technology and neuroscience developed for military applications. As the author discusses the innovative Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the role of the intelligence community and countless university science departments in preparing the military and intelligence services for the twenty-first century, he also charts the future of national security.Fully updated and revised, this edition features new material on deep brain stimulation, neuro hormones, and enhanced interrogation. With in-depth discussions of psyops mind control experiments, drugs that erase both fear and the need to sleep, microchip brain implants and advanced prosthetics, supersoldiers and robot armies, Mind Wars may read like science fiction or the latest conspiracy thriller, but its subjects are very real and changing the course of modern warfare.Jonathan D. Moreno has been a senior staff member for three presidential advisory commissions and has served on a number of Pentagon advisory committees. He is an ethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the editor-in-chief of the Center for American Progress online magazine Science Progress.