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A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf

"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister--a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling.

In this classic essay, Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those who are without. Her message is a simple one: women must have a steady income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create.

With a Foreword by Mary Gordon

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Sitting Pretty

Rebekah Taussig

A memoir-in-essays from Rebekah Taussig, disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty, reflecting on identity, accessibility, and representation and processing a lifetime of memories to paint a more beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.

Rebekah Taussig has been paralyzed for as long as she can remember but didn't begin to unpack it until she was in her mid-twenties working on a PhD in disability studies. She began writing mini-essays about what it means to live as a disabled woman and exploring the limited ways we typically see disability: something monstrous (the Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). She longed for stories that reflected her experiences--stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.

Sitting Pretty offers an honest look at disability and its effects on identity, love, money, and self-worth. Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and the false idea of "ableism."

Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. We all need more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. A timely reminder to look beyond ourselves and our singular experiences, Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.

 

 

 

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The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later—the night before New Year’s Eve—the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.
 

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Hidden Figures

Margot Lee Shetterly

The #1 New York Times bestseller

-WINNER OF ANISFIELD-WOLF AWARD FOR NONFICTION
-WINNER BLACK CAUCUS OF AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION BEST NONFICTION BOOK
-WINNER NAACP IMAGE AWARD BEST NONFICTION BOOK
-WINNER NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING AND MEDICINE COMMUNICATION AWARD

The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space—a powerful, revelatory contribution that is as essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as Between the World and Me and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.

 

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Grace & Steel

J. Randy Taraborrelli

From New York Times bestselling celebrity biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli comes Grace & Steel, the epic, hidden history of the exceptional women behind the greatest political dynasty of all time—the Bush family.

Bestselling author J. Randy Taraborrelli reveals the unsung heroines of the inimitable Bush family dynasty: not only First Ladies Barbara and Laura, but other colorful women whose stories have been left out of history for far too long, including Barbara’s mother-in-law, the formidable Dorothy Bush; the enigmatic Columba and the controversial Sharon; and Laura’s twins, Jenna and Barbara.

No matter the challenges related to power and politics, the women of the Bush dynasty always fought for equality in their marriages as they raised their children to be true to American values. In doing so, they inspired everyday Americans to do the same. Or, as Barbara Bush put it, “The future of this nation does not depend on what happens in the White House, but what happens in your house.”

Details from the book include:

—The tragedy Barbara faced in burying her three-year-old daughter, Robin, and her struggle with depression over the decades that followed.

—The tragic night a teenage Laura Bush accidentally killed a good friend—a story she did not discuss publicly for decades.

—The revelation of the affair that almost doomed George HW's hopes for the presidency.

—The truth behind the fraught relationship between Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush that culminated in an angry phone call during which Barbara told her she would never speak to her again—and she didn't.

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Queen of Our Times

Robert Hardman

The definitive portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by a renowned royal biographer.

As seen on Good Morning America, CNN, and the BBC

Shy but with a steely self-confidence; inscrutable despite ten decades in the public eye; unflappable; devout; indulgent; outwardly reserved, inwardly passionate; unsentimental; inquisitive; young at heart.

Even with her recent passing at age ninety-six, she remains a twenty-first century global phenomenon commanding unrivalled respect and affection. Sealed off during the greatest peacetime emergency of modern times, she has stuck to her own maxim: "I have to be seen to be believed."

Robert Hardman, one of Britain’s most acclaimed royal biographers, now wraps up the full story of one of the undisputed greats in a thousand years of monarchy. Hardman distills Elizabeth's complex life into a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal. It is a portrait of a world leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the Throne at age twenty-five.

With peerless access to members of the Royal Family, staff, friends, and royal records, Queen of Our Times brings fresh insights and scholarship to the modern royal story. There will be no more thorough, more readable, more original book on Elizabeth II as we celebrate a life and reign that, surely, will never be equaled.

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The Power of Adrienne Rich

Hilary Holladay

The first comprehensive biography of Adrienne Rich, feminist and queer icon and internationally revered National Book Award winning poet.

Adrienne Rich was the female face of American poetry for decades. Her forceful, uncompromising writing has more than stood the test of time, and the life of the woman behind the words is equally impressive. Motivated by personal revelations, Rich transformed herself from a traditional, Radcliffe-educated lyric poet and married mother of three sons into a path-breaking lesbian-feminist author of prose as well as poetry. In doing so, she emerged as both architect and exemplar of the modern feminist movement, breaking ranks to denounce the male-dominated literary establishment and paving the way for the many queer women of letters to take their places in the cultural mainstream. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished materials, including Rich's correspondence and in-depth interviews with numerous people who knew her, Hilary Holladay digs deep into never-before-accessed sources to portray Rich in full dimension and vivid, human detail.

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Becoming

Michelle Obama

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States
 
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.
 
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

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Frontier Grit

Marianne Monson

Discover the stories of twelve women who "heard the call" to settle the west and who came from all points of the globe to begin their journey. As a slave, Clara watched as her husband and children were sold, only to be reunited with her youngest daughter, as a free woman, six decades later. As a young girl, Charlotte hid her gender to escape a life of poverty and became the greatest stagecoach driver that ever lived. As a Native American, Gertrude fought to give her people a voice and to educate leaders about the ways and importance of her culture.

These are gripping miniature dramas of good-hearted women, selfless providers, courageous immigrants and migrants, and women with skills too innumerable to list. Many were crusaders for social justice and women's rights. All endured hardships, overcame obstacles, broke barriers, and changed the world.

The author ties the stories of these pioneer women to the experiences of women today with the hope that they will be inspired to live boldly and bravely and to fill their own lives with vision, faith, and fortitude. To live with grit.

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.
 
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
 
Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin

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Maiden Voyages

Siân Evans

In an engaging and anecdotal social history, Siân Evans's Maiden Voyages explores how women’s lives were transformed by the Golden Age of ocean liner travel between Europe and North America.

During the early twentieth century, transatlantic travel was the province of the great ocean liners. It was an extraordinary undertaking made by many women, whose lives were changed forever by their journeys between the Old World and the New. Some traveled for leisure, some for work; others to reinvent themselves or find new opportunities. They were celebrities, migrants and millionaires, refugees, aristocrats and crew members whose stories have mostly remained untold—until now.

Maiden Voyages is a fascinating portrait of the era, the ships themselves, and these women as they crossed the Atlantic. The ocean liner was a microcosm of contemporary society, divided by class: from the luxury of the upper deck, playground for the rich and famous, to the cramped conditions of steerage or third class travel. In first class you’ll meet A-listers like Marlene Dietrich, Wallis Simpson, and Josephine Baker; the second class carried a new generation of professional and independent women, like pioneering interior designer Sibyl Colefax. Down in steerage, you’ll follow the journey of émigré Maria Riffelmacher as she escapes poverty in Europe. Bustling between decks is a crew of female workers, including Violet “The Unsinkable Stewardess” Jessop, who survived the Titanic disaster.

Entertaining and informative, Maiden Voyages captures the golden age of ocean liners through the stories of the women whose transatlantic journeys changed the shape of society on both sides of the globe.

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Red Comet

Heather Clark

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.

“One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read." —Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed


With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant Sylvia Plath, who had precocious poetic ambition and was an accomplished published writer even before she became a star at Smith College. Refusing to read Plath’s work as if her every act was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark considers the sociopolitical context as she thoroughly explores Plath’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her troubles with an unenlightened mental health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes; and much more.

Clark’s clear-eyed portraits of Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath’s suicide promote a deeper understanding of her final days. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark’s meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.

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All That She Carried

Tiya Miles

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives.
 
WINNER: Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Harriet Tubman Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Lawrence W. Levine Award, Darlene Clark Hine Award, Cundill History Prize, Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, Massachusetts Book Award


ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Vulture, Publishers Weekly

“A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

 
In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language. 
 
Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds. It honors the creativity and resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today
 
FINALIST: MAAH Stone Book Award, Kirkus Prize, Mark Lynton History Prize, Chatauqua Prize

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Smithsonian Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, Book Riot, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist

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Women in White Coats

Olivia Campbell

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionizing the way women receive health care.

In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness--a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society.

Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman's place in the male-dominated medical field. For the first time ever, Women in White Coats tells the complete history of these three pioneering women who, despite countless obstacles, earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same. Though very different in personality and circumstance, together these women built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges--creating for the first time medical care for women by women.

With gripping storytelling based on extensive research and access to archival documents, Women in White Coats tells the courageous history these women made by becoming doctors, detailing the boundaries they broke of gender and science to reshape how we receive medical care today.

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The Making of Biblical Womanhood

Beth Allison Barr

USA Today Bestseller

Christianity Today 2022 Book Award Finalist (History & Biography)

Foreword INDIES 2021 Finalist for Religion

"A powerful work of skillful research and personal insight."--Publishers Weekly

Biblical womanhood--the belief that God designed women to be submissive wives, virtuous mothers, and joyful homemakers--pervades North American Christianity. From choices about careers to roles in local churches to relationship dynamics, this belief shapes the everyday lives of evangelical women. Yet biblical womanhood isn't biblical, says Baylor University historian Beth Allison Barr. It arose from a series of clearly definable historical moments.

This book moves the conversation about biblical womanhood beyond Greek grammar and into the realm of church history--ancient, medieval, and modern--to show that this belief is not divinely ordained but a product of human civilization that continues to creep into the church. Barr's historical insights provide context for contemporary teachings about women's roles in the church and help move the conversation forward.

Interweaving her story as a Baptist pastor's wife, Barr sheds light on the #ChurchToo movement and abuse scandals in Southern Baptist circles and the broader evangelical world, helping readers understand why biblical womanhood is more about human power structures than the message of Christ.

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The Secret History of Home Economics

Danielle Dreilinger

An NPR Favorite History Book of 2021

The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics.

The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today.

 

In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education.

Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages.

This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

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Vanguard

Martha S. Jones

"According to conventional wisdom, American women's campaign for the vote began with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The movement was led by storied figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But this women's movement was an overwhelmingly white one, and it secured the constitutional right to vote for white women, not for all women. In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha Jones offers a sweeping history of African American women's political lives in America, recounting how they fought for, won, and used the right to the ballot and how they fought against both racism and sexism. From 1830s Boston to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and beyond to Shirley Chisholm, Stacey Abrams, and Kamala Harris, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women who, although in many cases suffragists, were never single-issue activists. She recounts the lives of Maria Stewart, the first American woman to speak about politics before a mixed audience of men and women African Methodist Episcopal preacher Jarena Lee Reconstruction-era advocate for female suffrage Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Boston abolitionist, religious leader, and women's club organizer Eliza Ann Gardner, and other hidden figures who were pioneers for both gender and racial equality. Revealing the ways black women remained independent in their ideas and their organization, Jones shows how black women were again and again the American vanguard of women's rights, setting the pace in the quest for justice and collective liberation. In the twenty-first century, black women's power at the polls and in politics is evident. Vanguard reveals that this power is not at all new, but is instead the culmination of two centuries of dramatic struggle"--

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The Last Nomad

Shugri Said Salh

A remarkable and inspiring true story that "stuns with raw beauty" about one woman's resilience, her courageous journey to America, and her family's lost way of life.

Born in Somalia, a spare daughter in a large family, Shugri Said Salh was sent at age six to live with her nomadic grandmother in the desert. The last of her family to learn this once-common way of life, Salh found herself chasing warthogs, climbing termite hills, herding goats, and moving constantly in search of water and grazing lands with her nomadic family. For Salh, though the desert was a harsh place threatened by drought, predators, and enemy clans, it also held beauty, innovation, centuries of tradition, and a way for a young Sufi girl to learn courage and independence from a fearless group of relatives. Salh grew to love the freedom of roaming with her animals and the powerful feeling of community found in nomadic rituals and the oral storytelling of her ancestors.

As she came of age, though, both she and her beloved Somalia were forced to confront change, violence, and instability. Salh writes with engaging frankness and a fierce feminism of trying to break free of the patriarchal beliefs of her culture, of her forced female genital mutilation, of the loss of her mother, and of her growing need for independence. Taken from the desert by her strict father and then displaced along with millions of others by the Somali Civil War, Salh fled first to a refugee camp on the Kenyan border and ultimately to North America to learn yet another way of life.

Readers will fall in love with Salh on the page as she tells her inspiring story about leaving Africa, learning English, finding love, and embracing a new horizon for herself and her family. Honest and tender, The Last Nomad is a riveting coming-of-age story of resilience, survival, and the shifting definitions of home.

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Such Color

Tracy K. Smith

“Tracy K. Smith’s poetry is an awakening itself.” —Vogue

Celebrated for its extraordinary intelligence and exhilarating range, the poetry of Tracy K. Smith opens up vast questions. Such Color: New and Selected Poems, her first career-spanning volume, traces an increasingly audacious commitment to exploring the unknowable, the immense mysteries of existence. Each of Smith’s four collections moves farther outward: when one seems to reach the limits of desire and the body, the next investigates the very sweep of history; when one encounters death and the outer reaches of space, the next bears witness to violence against language and people from across time and delves into the rescuing possibilities of the everlasting. Smith’s signature voice, whether in elegy or praise or outrage, insists upon vibrancy and hope, even—and especially—in moments of inconceivable travesty and grief.

Such Color collects the best poems from Smith’s award-winning books and culminates in thirty pages of brilliant, excoriating new poems. These new works confront America’s historical and contemporary racism and injustices, while they also rise toward the registers of the ecstatic, the rapturous, and the sacred—urging us toward love as a resistance to everything that impedes it. This magnificent retrospective affirms Smith’s place as one of the twenty-first century’s most treasured poets.

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Caste (Oprah's Book Club)

Isabel Wilkerson

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews


Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist • Kirkus Prize Finalist

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”
 
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
 
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

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A More Beautiful and Terrible History

Jeanne Theoharis

Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light.

We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions.

Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared.

By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done.

Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction

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Men We Reaped

Jesmyn Ward

Named one of the Best Books of the Century by New York Magazine

Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones, Sing, Unburied, Sing) contends with the deaths of five young men dear to her, and the risk of being a black man in the rural South.

"We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.†? -Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life-to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth-and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward's memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying, Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

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When They Tell You To Be Good

Prince Shakur

After immigrating from Jamaica to the United States, Prince Shakur’s family is rocked by the murder of Prince’s biological father in 1995. Behind the murder is a sordid family truth, scripted in the lines of a diary by an outlawed uncle hell-bent on avenging the murder of Prince’s father. As Shakur begins to unravel his family’s secrets, he must navigate the strenuous terrain of coming to terms with one’s inner self while confronting the steeped complexities of the Afro-diaspora.

When They Tell You to Be Good charts Shakur’s political coming of age from closeted queer kid in a Jamaican family to radicalized adult traveler, writer, and anarchist in Obama and Trump’s America. Shakur journeys from France to the Philippines, South Korea, and elsewhere to discover the depths of the Black experience, and engages in deep political questions while participating in movements like Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock. By the end, Shakur reckons with his identity, his family’s immigration, and the intergenerational impacts of patriarchal and colonial violence.

Examining a tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, When They Tell You to Be Good shines a light on what we all must ask of ourselves—to be more than what America envisions for the oppressed—as Shakur compels readers to take a closer, deeper look at the political world of young, Black, queer, and radical millennials today.

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Alabama V. King

David Fisher

"Poignant, sometimes harrowing." -Wall Street Journal

The defense lawyer for Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, the Selma marchers, and other civil rights heroes reveals the true story of the historic trial that made Dr. King a national hero.

Fred D. Gray was just twenty-four years old when he became the defense lawyer for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young minister who had become the face of the bus boycott that had rocked the city of in Montgomery, Alabama. In this incredible history, Gray takes us behind the scenes of that landmark case, including such unforgettable moments as:

*Martin Luther King's courageous response to a bomb threat on his own home
*Poignant, searing testimony that exposed the South's racist systems to an worldwide audience
*The conspiracy to destroy Gray's career and draft him into the Vietnam War
*The unforgettable moment when a Supreme Court ruling brought the courtroom to a halt

Alabama v. King captures a pivotal moment in the fight for equality, from the eyes of the lawyer who Dr. King called "the brilliant young leader who later became the chief counsel for the protest movement."

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His Name Is George Floyd

Robert Samuels

FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION

A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy—from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing—telling the story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.


“It is a testament to the power of His Name Is George Floyd that the book’s most vital moments come not after Floyd’s death, but in its intimate, unvarnished and scrupulous account of his life . . . Impressive.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Since we know George Floyd’s death with tragic clarity, we must know Floyd’s America—and life—with tragic clarity. Essential for our times.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist
 
“A much-needed portrait of the life, times, and martyrdom of George Floyd, a chronicle of the racial awakening sparked by his brutal and untimely death, and an essential work of history I hope everyone will read.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his face was painted onto countless murals and his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life.
 
His Name Is George Floyd tells the story of a beloved figure from Houston's housing projects as he faced the stifling systemic pressures that come with being a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the context of the country's enduring legacy of institutional racism, this deeply reported account examines Floyd's family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the overpolicing of his community amid a wave of mass incarceration, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction—putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Floyd's closest friends and family, his elementary school teachers and varsity coaches, civil rights icons, and those in the highest seats of political power, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd’s America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world.

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The Three Mothers

Anna Malaika Tubbs

New York Times Bestseller

“This dynamic blend of biography and manifesto centers on Louise Little, Alberta King, and Berdis Baldwin . . . Tubbs’s book stands against the women’s erasure, a monument to their historical importance.
The New Yorker

"Tubbs' connection to these women is palpable on the page — as both a mother and a scholar of the impact Black motherhood has had on America. Through Tubbs' writing, Berdis, Alberta, and Louise's stories sing. Theirs is a history forgotten that begs to be told, and Tubbs tells it brilliantly."
Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist and National Book Award winner Stamped from the Beginning

Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes.

Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These three extraordinary women passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning—from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced.

These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America’s racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families’ safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers.

These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.

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The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The book that galvanized the nation, gave voice to the emerging civil rights movementin the 1960s—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today. • "The finest essay I’ve ever read.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates
At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. 

Described by The New York Times Book Review as "sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle … all presented in searing, brilliant prose," The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of literature.

 

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Playlist for the Apocalypse

Rita Dove

Finalist for the 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry

A piercing, unflinching new volume offers necessary music for our tumultuous present, from “perhaps the best public poet we have” (Boston Globe).

In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America’s, and the world’s, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or the contemporary efforts of Black Lives Matter, a girls’ night clubbing in the shadow of World War II or the doomed nobility of Muhammad Ali’s conscious objector stance, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history’s grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives.

 

Meticulously orchestrated and musical in its forms, Playlist for the Apocalypse collects a dazzling array of voices: an elevator operator simmers with resentment, an octogenarian dances an exuberant mambo, a spring cricket philosophizes with mordant humor on hip hop, critics, and Valentine’s Day. Calamity turns all too personal in the book’s final section, “Little Book of Woe,” which charts a journey from terror to hope as Dove learns to cope with debilitating chronic illness.

At turns audaciously playful and grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to catastrophic failures of the human soul. Listen up, the poet says, speaking truth to power; what you’ll hear in return is “a lifetime of song.”

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The Grimkes

Kerri K. Greenidge

New York Times • "15 Works of Nonfiction to Read This Fall"
Boston Globe • "20 New Books We're Most Excited to Read This Fall"

A stunning counternarrative of the legendary abolitionist Grimke sisters that finally reclaims the forgotten Black members of their family.


Sarah and Angelina Grimke—the Grimke sisters—are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their privileged lives on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand activists in the North. Their antislavery pamphlets, among the most influential of the antebellum era, are still read today. Yet retellings of their epic story have long obscured their Black relatives. In The Grimkes, award-winning historian Kerri Greenidge presents a parallel narrative, indeed a long-overdue corrective, shifting the focus from the white abolitionist sisters to the Black Grimkes and deepening our understanding of the long struggle for racial and gender equality.

That the Grimke sisters had Black relatives in the first place was a consequence of slavery’s most horrific reality. Sarah and Angelina’s older brother, Henry, was notoriously violent and sadistic, and one of the women he owned, Nancy Weston, bore him three sons: Archibald, Francis, and John. While Greenidge follows the brothers’ trials and exploits in the North, where Archibald and Francis became prominent members of the post–Civil War Black elite, her narrative centers on the Black women of the family, from Weston to Francis’s wife, the brilliant intellectual and reformer Charlotte Forten, to Archibald’s daughter, Angelina Weld Grimke, who channeled the family’s past into pathbreaking modernist literature during the Harlem Renaissance.

In a grand saga that spans the eighteenth century to the twentieth and stretches from Charleston to Philadelphia, Boston, and beyond, Greenidge reclaims the Black Grimkes as complex, often conflicted individuals shadowed by their origins. Most strikingly, she indicts the white Grimke sisters for their racial paternalism. They could envision the end of slavery, but they could not imagine Black equality: when their Black nephews did not adhere to the image of the kneeling and eternally grateful slave, they were cruel and relentlessly judgmental—an emblem of the limits of progressive white racial politics.

A landmark biography of the most important multiracial American family of the nineteenth century, The Grimkes suggests that just as the Hemingses and Jeffersons personified the racial myths of the founding generation, the Grimkes embodied the legacy—both traumatic and generative—of those myths, which reverberate to this day.

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The 1619 Project

Nikole Hannah-Jones

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER • A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.

FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, Marie Claire, Electric Lit, Ms. magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist


In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

Featuring contributions from: Leslie Alexander • Michelle Alexander • Carol Anderson • Joshua Bennett • Reginald Dwayne Betts • Jamelle Bouie • Anthea Butler • Matthew Desmond • Rita Dove • Camille T. Dungy • Cornelius Eady • Eve L. Ewing • Nikky Finney • Vievee Francis • Yaa Gyasi • Forrest Hamer • Terrance Hayes • Kimberly Annece Henderson • Jeneen Interlandi • Honorée Fanonne Jeffers • Barry Jenkins • Tyehimba Jess • Martha S. Jones • Robert Jones, Jr. • A. Van Jordan • Ibram X. Kendi • Eddie Kendricks • Yusef Komunyakaa • Kevin M. Kruse • Kiese Laymon • Trymaine Lee • Jasmine Mans • Terry McMillan • Tiya Miles • Wesley Morris • Khalil Gibran Muhammad • Lynn Nottage • ZZ Packer • Gregory Pardlo • Darryl Pinckney • Claudia Rankine • Jason Reynolds • Dorothy Roberts • Sonia Sanchez • Tim Seibles • Evie Shockley • Clint Smith • Danez Smith • Patricia Smith • Tracy K. Smith • Bryan Stevenson • Nafissa Thompson-Spires • Natasha Trethewey • Linda Villarosa • Jesmyn Ward

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Four Hundred Souls

Ibram X. Kendi

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A chorus of extraordinary voices tells the epic story of the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present—edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.

FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post, Town & Country, Ms. magazine, BookPage, She Reads, BookRiot, Booklist • “A vital addition to [the] curriculum on race in America . . . a gateway to the solo works of all the voices in Kendi and Blain’s impressive choir.”—The Washington Post
 
“From journalist Hannah P. Jones on Jamestown’s first slaves to historian Annette Gordon-Reed’s portrait of Sally Hemings to the seductive cadences of poets Jericho Brown and Patricia Smith, Four Hundred Souls weaves a tapestry of unspeakable suffering and unexpected transcendence.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

The story begins in 1619—a year before the Mayflower—when the White Lion disgorges “some 20-and-odd Negroes” onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the African presence in what would become the United States. It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history. 

Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness. 

This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.

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Smithsonian Makers Workshop

Smithsonian Institution

50 DIY crafts, cooking, decorating, and gardening projects from the experts at the Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution presents a uniquely curated collection of lively how-to projects and historical narratives of four realms of American domestic arts: cooking, crafts, decorating, and gardening. Perfect for hobbyists interested in the historical context of what they create for their homes, this beautifully illustrated book contains fifty DIY projects--from a uniquely American quilt pattern to on-trend crafts like terrarium making and pickling--that all offer satisfying ways to bring history and culture to life. For those craving more, features provide rare insights from Smithsonian experts on prominent figures, events, and trends. Readers can learn about influential Americans who've had an impact on each realm; look at visual timelines of significant events that pushed development forward; or stay in the present and see how American arts in contemporary life is being redefined, all while enjoying satisfying and unique projects.

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Modern Quilt Bible

Elizabeth Betts

Learn how to create stunning modern quilts with the Modern Quilt Bible: the ultimate reference guide to patchwork and quilting techniques. Author of Beginner's Guide to Quilting Liz Betts explains over 100 techniques used by designers to create eye-catching modern quilts.

Try your hand at improv piecing, free motion quilting, playing with scale, curved piecing and much more. There are featured quilts from the world's best modern quilt designers and ten unique quilted projects using a range of modern quilt techniques so you can practice your new-found skills.

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The Martha Manual

Martha Stewart

Essential life skills from America's most trusted lifestyle expert--together in one beautiful and practical handbook, with hundreds of ideas, instructions, and inspirations

Martha Stewart is America's go-to source for the best answers to nearly every question. As an authority on the many worlds upon which she's built her domestic empire, she can advise on everything from creating a cutting garden and setting the table to playing classic lawn games or building a campfire. Whether it's organizing, celebrating, cleaning, decorating, or any number of other life skills, these are the time-tested, Martha-approved strategies for frequent challenges and basic how-to knowledge that everyone should have at the ready. Also included are plenty of solutions for the not-so-common conundrums, such as how to transport a decorated cake, bathe a cat, or fold an American flag. With hundreds of expert tips and useful insights in an easy-to-follow format, this is the manual you need to learn how to do everything--the Martha way.

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How to Build Your Own Tiny House

Roger Marshall

Tiny homes are all the rage these days, especially among young people new to the housing market, for people wanting a small dwelling as a second home or as a studio, and among singles and empty nesters. As millions are experiencing the "magic" of tidying up and reducing the number of their possessions, many are also seeing the value of living with less space, while environmentalists are also valuing a smaller carbon footprint.

  • How to Build Your Own Tiny House is a comprehensive guide to the actual construction process, building codes, and regulations, not another pretty picture book about tiny houses.
  • Offers anyone with basic carpentry skills step-by-step instructions to successfully build a tiny house (250 to 1,000 square feet.)
  • The book covers everything from forming a bill of materials to the basics of frame construction; it details wiring and plumbing a tiny home, outlines construction codes for small buildings and gives pointers as to where local regulations may apply, and also includes a section on building appropriately sized furniture for a tiny home.
  • Includes a selection of tiny home designs, each of which can be expanded as needs change.
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Pop Manga Drawing

Camilla d'Errico

An easy-to-follow, step-by-step manga drawing instruction book from fan favorite manga artist and painter Camilla d'Errico, featuring 30 lessons on illustrating cute, cool, and quirky characters in the Pop Surrealist style with pencils.

With wildly popular appearances at Comic Cons and her paintings displayed in art galleries around the world, Camilla d'Errico has established herself as a go-to resource for manga-influenced art. Following in the footsteps of her past art instruction books Pop Manga and Pop Painting, Pop Manga Drawing provides the most direct and accessible lessons yet for rendering characters in her signature Pop Surrealist style. Written in the fun and encouraging voice that fans have come to expect, Pop Manga Drawing takes you step-by-step through lessons on drawing with graphite and mechanical pencils, along with insights on enhancing pieces with other mediums (including acrylics, markers, and colored pencils). It also provides tips and expert advice on drawing specific elements, including hair, eyes, and animals, that can take your manga art to the next level. Pop Manga Drawing grants one-of-a-kind access to the basic building blocks of artistic expression, giving you the tools you need to create your own pop manga masterpieces.

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Attainable Sustainable

Kris Bordessa

Packed with delicious recipes, natural remedies, gardening tips, crafts, and more, this indispensable lifestyle reference from the popular blogger makes earth-friendly living fun.

Whether you live in a city, suburb, or the country, this essential guide for the backyard homesteader will help you achieve a homespun life--from starting your own garden and pickling the food you grow to pressing wildflowers, baking sourdough loaves, quilting, raising chickens, and creating your own natural cleaning supplies. In these richly illustrated pages, sustainability-guru Kris Bordessa offers DIY lovers an indispensable home reference for sustainability in the 21st century, with tried-and-true advice, 50 enticing recipes, and step-by-step directions for creating easy, cost-efficient projects that will bring out your inner pioneer. Filled with 340 color photographs, this relatable, comprehensive book contains time honored-wisdom and modern know-how for getting back to basics in a beautiful, accessible package.

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Elemental Knits

Courtney Spainhower

Elemental Knits is for women who aspire to be ever stylish, more comfortable, and less wasteful. With knitwear designer Courtney Spainhower, you'll craft an appearance that truly reflects your spirit with a collection of 20 knitting patterns designed to enhance your wardrobe year-round.

   • Knit with intention, selecting patterns and fibers for their wearablity, versatility, and how they enhance your existing wardrobe.
   • 20 patterns explore a range of knitting techniques with features suited to each season--texture and cables for autumn, allover patterning for winter, garter and lace for spring, and colorful accents for summer.
   • Revel in gorgeous details that take these garments and accessories from functional to essential in a way that will have you wearing them year after year.
Enrich your hand-knit wardrobe with intentional projects that will act as wardrobe staples for years to come with Elemental Knits.

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Woodworking

DK

Get started on your woodwork practice with this ultimate guide to essential carpentry skills, techniques, tools, tips, and tricks.

Complete and easy directions for key skills, from simple joinery techniques to more involved woodworking projects, with clear helpful photographs. Key carpentry skills, from simple joinery techniques to fine woodworking projects, through clear, step-by-step instructions and photographs.

New carpenters will learn about the essential tools needed and the principles of basic design and practice crucial techniques like wood joints, finishing, woodturning, and furniture restoration.

Experienced crafters will enjoy enhancing their skills and learning something new. We’ll make sure you choose the right wood for the job and find more than 100 hard and softwoods, plus their properties, in our handy directory.

Put your skills into practice with 28 DIY woodworking projects. This carpentry book will show you how to create home accessories, furnishings, outdoor projects, workshop projects, and more. This reference book provides all the information you need to become a master carpenter and have a houseful of fine furnishings to show for the effort! 

Everything You Need to Know About Woodworking

Woodworking is a complete illustrated carpentry course with comprehensive and extensive photos to show you how to become a craftsman. You’ll have all the information you need to start your projects right away with simple step-by-step instructions. It also makes a fantastic gift for hobby carpenters.

Inside, you’ll discover:

• Tools: Understand how to use hand, power, and machine tools, and choose the right wood for every job.
• Techniques: Follow clear, step-by-step instructions to master all key woodworking techniques.
• Projects: Put your skills into practice to create well-crafted and practical objects, from a wine rack to a chest of drawers.

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One-Day DIY: Modern Farmhouse Furniture

JP Strate

Fast Weekend Projects for an Upscale, Rustic Home

In their debut book, JP Strate and Liz Spillman, creators of the popular DIY YouTube channel The Rehab Life, bring over 20 new beginner-friendly furniture projects to your home. Their distinctive style pairs clean, contemporary designs with natural wood and warm stains to give your space that urban farmhouse look. There’s no need for prior woodworking experience or a garage full of fancy tools. It’s easy to dive right in, with minimal materials, foolproof instructions and gorgeous results. Each project is so quick to complete, you won’t be able to stop until your entire home is transformed into a chic, cozy haven.

In just 24 hours, you could be sitting at your very own handmade Hairpin Leg Dining Table, waking up to your Dreamy Headboard or selecting a bottle from your classy Napa Valley Wine Rack. Unlock a whole new world of home decor possibilities, free from high-end price tags and cookie-cutter furnishings, while discovering a woodworking skill you didn’t know you had. You’ll be showing off your timeless custom furniture for years to come!

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Seasonal Flower Arranging

Ariella Chezar

This lavishly photographed book from renowned floral designer Ariella Chezar provides step-by-step instructions for 39 seasonal floral arrangements and projects that celebrate the splendor of flowers, the bounty of the changing seasons, and the wild beauty of nature in your home.

Just as fruits and vegetables taste best when they are harvested locally and seasonally, flowers that are picked close to home and at their peak reflect a true connection to time and place. Nature does not deliver its harvest all at once--each season has its stars and Ariella Chezar, author of The Flower Workshop, shows you how to make the most of them. Seasonal Flower Arranging follows Mother Nature's lead to create dazzling arrangements from the distinctive gifts of the changing seasons, from a charming spring bouquet for Mother's Day to a bold garland for a summer wedding, and from a bounteous Thanksgiving table to a wintery holiday wreath. There are arrangements for seasonal holidays, special occasions, or just everyday life featuring tulips, roses, peonies, dahlias, and other flowers that are easily found at farmers' markets, local shops, or grown in your own backyard. The book includes detailed instructions on how to re-create 39 floral designs, plus the inspiration and techniques to allow you to create your own original art out of nature.

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Small Garden Style

Isa Hendry Eaton

A stylishly photographed guide to creating lush, layered, dramatic little gardens no matter the size of your available space--an urban patio, a tiny backyard, or even just a pot by your door.

Petite gardens align with the movement to live smaller and create a life with less stuff and more room for living. But a more eco-friendly and efficient space doesn't have to sacrifice style. In Small Garden Style, garden designer Isa Hendry Eaton and lifestyle writer Jennifer Blaise Kramer show you how to use good design to create a joyful, elegant, and exciting yet compact outdoor living space for entertaining or relaxing.

A style quiz helps you focus in on your own personal garden style, be it traditional, modern, colorful, eclectic, minimalist, or globally inspired, then utilize every inch of your yard by considering the horizontal, vertical, and overhead spaces. You'll learn how to design stunning planters and container gardens using succulents, grasses, vibrant-colored pots, and more. Hendry Eaton and Blaise Kramer recommend their favorite plants and decor for small gardens, along with lawn alternatives and inspiration for making garden accents such as a fire pit, front door wreath, instant mini orchard, boulder birdbath, patterned vines, perfumed wall, and faux fountain with cascading plants.

However small your garden, Small Garden Style will transform it into a magical, modern outdoor oasis.

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Mixed Fiber Macramé

Chantel Conlon

Take Macramé to the Next Level with Simple Weaving Techniques and Colorful Fibers

Weave color and creativity into your macramé art with 24 fresh projects featuring on-trend techniques and fun fibers. Ribbons, raffia, roving and more bring an inspired twist to this ever-popular craft, and Chantel Conlon is your guide to this modern approach. She’ll teach you to macraweave eye-catching wall hangings, knot elegant plant hangers with pops of color and make your own stylish home décor, like pillows, rugs and more. You’ll be amazed at just how simple it is to create incredible macramé pieces no one else has seen before.

Packed with step-by-step instructions and photos, everything you need to make stunning creations is here in one place. New knotters will appreciate the detailed knot guide, beginner-friendly tutorials and information on how to set up your workspace. Meanwhile, experienced fiber artists will be excited to dive into advanced techniques and a seemingly endless variety of colors and fibers. With a vast array of captivating designs like the Zahra Chandelier, Triple Threat Plant Hanger, Might as Wool Macraweave and Under the Sea Wall Hanging, get ready to have your friends and family gushing over your trendy handwoven home décor.

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How to Whittle

Josh Nava

The age-old woodworking technique, whittling, is growing in popularity. How to Whittle presents 25 beautiful whittling projects to make and is paired with advice on selecting the best wood for your projects and details on finishes, making these simple projects ideal for beginners.

  • Full-color photography and step-by-step instructions guide whittling newbies through the process, from selecting and maintaining carving knives to mastering luxurious finishing techniques, ensuring success as they learn this craft.
  • Serious woodworkers will love the creative dimensions that whittling introduces to their projects.
  • Includes advice on selecting the best wood for your projects, selecting and maintaining carving knives to finishing techniques such as sanding, oiling, and curing surfaces.

Projects can be made using just a couple of knives and a piece of wood!

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Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century

Dick and James Strawbridge

Find your route to a more sustainable lifestyle with Dick Strawbridge and his son, James.

We can all take steps to reduce our carbon footprint and be more self-sufficient. For some, that might mean heading to the countryside to live off the land. For the rest of us, the reality might involve smaller, but no less important, lifestyle changes: cutting back on plastic or food waste, growing vegetables, preserving meat and fish, preparing jams and chutneys, baking sourdough bread, making your own plant-based milk, or keeping a chicken or two.

Dick and James Strawbridge know what it's like to make these changes. Between them, they've lived on a smallholding, in a terraced house, and even a chateau. In this updated edition of Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century, they share everything they've learned and give you the tools you need for a more rewarding and environmentally conscious life.

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Make, Sew and Mend

Bernadette Banner

Learn the Historically Proven Stitches Every Seamster Needs with Beloved Historical Fashion YouTuber Bernadette Banner

Whether you are just getting started with sustainable fashion and need to alter your new secondhand finds, or you want an introduction to sewing techniques for making your own clothes, Bernadette Banner’s signature voice will guide you through all the traditional stitches and techniques you need to extend the life of your favorite pieces and take fashion into
your own hands!

From tips and tricks on choosing your materials and preparing your fabric for sewing to more complex techniques like mending small holes, adding pockets to garments, making your own buttons and beyond—this book has everything you need. Complete with step-by-step photos and insight into what alterations each sewing technique is best suited for, Bernadette walks you through every step of your sewing journey. For added inspiration, this book also includes profiles on exciting voices in the historic sewing community and their perspectives on how taking fashion into their own hands has changed their lives for the better. Make, Sew and Mend is the perfect foundation for beginner sewers to start making their fashion their own.

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Good Housekeeping Home Skills

Good Housekeeping

A practical and attractive handbook with more than 850 essential life skills to get anything done faster and easier

The editors and scientists at Good Housekeeping and its lab, the Good Housekeeping Institute, share genius solutions and trusted, expert advice in this how-to guide to making life simpler. With chapters on the kitchen, organizing and cleaning, decorating, home maintenance, outdoor living, and entertaining and celebrating, this go-to resource offers step-by-step illustrated instructions, inspiring photos and sometimes surprising but always practical guidance to get things done. Plus, you'll save time and money and even have fun along the way.

The 850+ skills include how to:

  • Store and make your own spice mixes
  • Clean your house in 15 minutes
  • Seal a drafty window
  • Remove water rings from your tables
  • Perk up a grocery-store bouquet
  • Sew a button
  • Plant an outdoor herb garden (and keep herbs fresh after they are picked!)
  • Make the perfect boiled egg
  • Uncork champagne
  • Cure a hangover and so much more!

  • QR codes throughout the pages offer additional lessons and video instruction. Whatever home means to you, this book is brimming with invaluable know-how to keep your home in tip-top shape and to help you inject more fun and flair into your every day.

 

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The New Design Rules

Emily Henderson

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Styled, here is Emily Henderson's masterclass on interior design.
 
“An approachable guide for anyone who is looking for tools and resources to create a home that speaks to who they are and what they love.”—Joanna Gaines

Whether you’re embarking on a weekend refresh or complete renovation, interior designer Emily Henderson wants you to take risks with your home design without experiencing regret. In this visually driven decorating bible punctuated with photographs from real homes and colorful illustrations, she takes you through her entire process, including every single decision she makes when it comes to picking paint, arranging furniture, hanging window treatments, and deciding on lighting fixtures. You'll also learn when to hire a contractor versus an architect versus a handyperson, all the materials to consider (and why you might want to skip those marble countertops), proper measurements of the elements in each room, and so much more. By the end of the book, you'll feel more confident when it comes to visualizing the home of your dreams, and you'll finally know how to make it happen.

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Remodelista: The Low-Impact Home

Margot Guralnick

Learn how to make planet-friendly choices at home with the design experts behind Remodelista.com

There’s no reason to sacrifice beauty, because this hardworking visual guide reveals a personalized, future-minded approach to creating a sustainable—and stylish—home by emphasizing conscientious consumerism and climate-aware choices.
 
In this book, you’ll visit a remodeled apartment inspired by the Slow Food movement, a DIY tree-house cabin, a multigenerational courtyard compound, and a family home built from hemp. There are tips on practices that reduce your environmental impact room by room, like adopting a gentler laundry routine, as well as eco-conscious guidelines for choosing nontoxic paint, upgrading windows, and eliminating plastic.
 
Change begins in the home, and it’s inspiring to learn how such steps, no matter how small, contribute to the greater good.
 
Including:

  • Low-impact remodeling ideas and approaches for every room
  • Planet-friendly essentials: lightbulbs, paint, rugs, furniture, and more
  • The Vintage 75: favorite tried-and-true objects for everyday use
  • Plus the lowdown on composting, roofing, insulation, HVAC, and more
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Watercolor for Relaxation

Angelica Torres

Peaceful Projects Perfect for Artists of Any Level

Paint your way to tranquility with projects featuring soothing tones, simple methods and stress-free, step-by-step instructions from water- color teacher Angelica Torres. Her emphasis on enjoying the whole process, rather than agonizing over perfection, makes it easy to embrace relaxation. Lose yourself in repetitive strokes and the inherent calm of color flowing across paper; before you know it, you’ve completed a frame-worthy masterpiece.

Be transported to Serene Rainy Mountains or relax amidst Mellow Wildflowers. Paint adorable dragonflies, beautiful botanicals and magical moon phases. These projects provide the perfect opportunity to unwind. You’ll find comprehensive sections on tools and techniques, ensuring you feel confident creating even if you’ve never held a brush before, plus tips for making meditative watercolor a daily practice. These tutorials will leave you with a clear mind and countless watercolor treasures, ideal for wall-hangings, greeting cards, gifting to loved ones and more.

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Kicking Glass

Neile Cooper

Creative and practical, Kicking Glass is a step-by-step guide for those wanting to practice the popular craft of stained glass.

From simple suncatchers and boho lamps to exquisite 3D constructions and delicately-poised glass butterflies, experienced artist Neile Cooper guides you through the magical world of stained glass with a creative handbook for both the novice and more experienced crafter alike.

Beautifully illustrated with photographs of Neile's own work including her glorious glass cabin in the woods as well as pieces from some of today's most stylish designers, Kicking Glass is packed with ideas to guide and inspire.

This book provides comprehensive technical instruction in the copper foil method, covering everything from tools and supplies to exploratory techniques such as including foraged and found objects into your work. Skills are demonstrated through tutorials with photos, instructional drawings and 16 stunning patterns. Whether you're looking to decorate your windows, create lovely gifts for friends and family or design your own epic masterpiece, Kicking Glass is the essential modern guide to stained glass making.

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Satisfying Stitches

Hope Brasfield

Discover the creative satisfaction and stress-relieving benefits of embroidery while stitching fun, modern, vibrant designs such as flowers, plants, animals, landscapes, and celestial scenes.

Beginning a new creative pursuit can be intimidating, but Satisfying Stitches takes all the guesswork and fear out of getting started with techniques designed to boost confidence and provide relaxation. This easy-to-follow, photo-illustrated guide includes a review of the basic and inexpensive supplies needed to get started, foundational techniques, and step-by-step instructions for creating a variety of stitches. As your skills and confidence grow, you will find that stitches that may look advanced are quite simple, and you’ll be able to easily add dimension and texture to your designs.

The exclusive embroidery designs include a wide variety of motifs and patterns, such as houseplants, florals, mushrooms, butterflies, fish, landscapes, and sunsets, in a variety of color palettes. The projects are divided into three levels to match your confidence, skill level, and time.

While most beginner books don’t go beyond a couple of easy stitches, Satisfying Stitches takes the opposite approach, incorporating stitches that pack a big “wow” factor but are quite easy, such as fern stitch, wheatear stitch, thistle flowers, and woven wheel roses. Author Hope Brasfield offers tons of encouragement to beginners and beyond. You’ll learn to embrace imperfection, slow down, and enjoy the process.

You will also discover, as Hope did, that embroidery offers much more than a creative outlet. Focusing on something that requires imagination, handwork, and concentration can help reduce stress and promote relaxation.

Satisfying Stitches features:
 

  • A wide range of attractive embroidery stitches that can be used to create any embroidery designs
  • 18 original embroidery designs for popular motifs
  • Detailed step-by-step instructions with clear photographs
  • Troubleshooting tips and tricks throughout the book


So much more than pretty patterns, Satisfying Stitches offers an exciting opportunity to gain new skills, become a more confident creative, ditch the smart phone, and de-stress.

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The Embroidered Closet

Alexandra Stratkotter

Sustainability meets DIY in this instructive guide to garment embroidery from designer and fiber artist Alexandra Stratkotter

Combining comprehensive instruction with photography and illustrations, The Embroidered Closet guides novice and experienced stitchers through the process of adorning and upcycling garments. Now more than ever, we are all pitching in to help the planet: This book offers a fun and satisfying avenue to do just that by refreshing the wardrobe you have and making your clothes seem new again.

The Embroidered Closet presents the inexpensive craft of embroidery and uses it to show readers just how fun embellishing your own clothing can be. Expect to learn not just about tools, techniques, stitches, and project designs, but also how to pick fabrics that work best for you and your wardrobe, how to source and thrift your clothing, and how to mend and prevent wear and tear. Stratkotter will inspire you to expand your options and test out your own embroidered creations. Whether you're interested in personalizing your clothing, upgrading wardrobe staples, or seeking to enhance your skill set, Stratkotter's stylish and classic designs offer something for everyone.
 

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The Tunisian Crochet Handbook

Toni Lipsey

From fiber artist Toni Lipsey of TL Yarn Craft, an introduction to the craft of Tunisian crochet--a unique crochet style that looks more like knitting--with 20 projects for beginners

There are hundreds of books that explore traditional crochet, but there are few that reference the concept of Tunisian crochet or present it in a modern, approachable way. The Tunisian Crochet Handbook introduces this fascinating and rewarding technique with a wide array of stitches and design possibilities. The goal of this book is to guide crocheters step-by-step through Tunisian crochet, starting with tools and yarns, transitioning into how-to's and stitches, and finishing with easy but engaging patterns. The book includes instructional sections and patterns, complete with the necessary schematics and styled, chic photographs.

Every shawl, garment, and accessory featured takes makers beyond the basics, introducing new stitches to expand their skill sets. In this way, author Toni Lipsey is reintroducing crochet and encouraging makers to explore the craft further with each new design. Crochet continues to grow in popularity, and this guidebook offers a new take on the timeless classic, one that readers won't be able to find anywhere else.

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Painting Can Save Your Life

Sara Woster

Artist and founder of The Painting School Sara Woster invites readers into the vibrant world of painting as a creative practice powerful enough to transform our lives.

Sara Woster is a painter, teacher, and art evangelist. She believes in art as a form of mindfulness, a ritual for healing, and an outlet for self-expression. In Painting Can Save Your Life, Woster welcomes readers into this transformative art form, inviting them to pick up a brush and discover how painting can help you see the world in a whole new way.

Weaving soup-to-nuts instruction on how to paint—from choosing the right materials to painting the human body—with her own story of discovering a passion for painting, this book includes:

  • simple and easy techniques for painters of all skill levels
  • playful and challenging painting exercises
  • tips on how to build a creative community using art
  • insights on how to use painting to cultivate a sense of calm in a stressful world

  • Part how-to-paint, part sheer inspiration, Painting Can Save Your Life is a wise and inspiring guide to the power of painting.

 

 

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Classic Calligraphy for Beginners

Younghae Chung

Classic Calligraphy for Beginners introduces the fundamental techniques for mastering two classic calligraphic scripts, Copperplate and Spencerian, plus easy-to-follow exercises and fun, modern projects.

Guided by instructions and illustrations by noted calligraphy artist and teacher Younghae Chung, you will:

  • Get a detailed yet concise overview of tools, supplies, and terminology
  • Try out your materials with basic warm-ups and nib exercises
  • Learn the essential principles or strokes and create the lowercase and uppercase letters of the featured scripts
  • Take your letters to the next level and add flourishes with confidence
  • Explore brush pens and non-flexible writing tools to emulate the look of calligraphy on large-scale and unusual surfaces
  • Reinforce core skills by applying the scripts to a variety of simple, modern projects on paper, wood, glass, fabric, and other surfaces, and get inspiring tips on how to add beautiful details that lend a modern touch
  • Find sample guide sheets for Copperplate, Spencerian, and brush calligraphy

Discover the timeless beauty of calligraphy with Classic Calligraphy for Beginners.

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DIY Resin Crafting Projects

Teodora Petkova

"Learn how to create trendy botanical jewelry and keepsakes with resin! If you have something you want to keep forever, whether it's a four-leaf clover, a bird's feather, beautiful blooms from your prom corsage or wedding bouquet, or something your child found in nature for you, this complete guide to making resin crafts will help you preserve it! This beginner-friendly crafting book includes 18 fun projects that are perfect for anyone to make gorgeous resin jewelry, crafts, and keepsakes from memorable moments, places, events, walks, and hikes. From a ring dish and a photo frame to wood coasters, jewelry, wall art, home dâecor, and more, you'll learn everything you need to know to successfully work with and pour resin, as well as how to preserve flowers, bugs, feathers, shells, and other natural treasures. Whether you're new to clear resin crafting or have some experience, inside this book, you'll learn tried and true techniques to achieve 18 beautiful resin pieces. With step-by-step instructions, coordinating photography, lists of tools and materials, must-know do's and don'ts, helpful tips on how to prepare bugs, flowers, feathers, and other natural objects, and so much more, DIY Resin Crafting Projects is a unique and engaging source of inspiration to introduce you to the exciting world of epoxy resin art!" --Provided by publisher.

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The Art of Papercraft

Helen Hiebert

Paper artist and teacher Helen Hiebert compiles a one-of-kind collection of 40 unique projects, each using just one sheet of paper. Combining decorative paper techniques like marbling, stamping, and stenciling  with dimensional techniques like origami, cutting, folding, quilling, stretching, weaving, and pop-ups, The Art of Papercraft offers a rich variety of projects that will delight crafters, artists, and designers alike, including paper votive lights, pop-up cards, folded paper gift boxes and envelopes, woven paper wall hangings, miniature one-sheet books, and much more. Every project is beautifully photographed and accompanied by step-by-step visual instructions. Guidance on selecting tools, materials, and paper selection; in-depth technique instructions; and profiles of contributing paper artists make this a rich and practical celebration of papercraft.  

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The Crafty Chica Creates!

Kathy Cano Murillo

Join the Queen of Latina Style to make joyous, vibrant, sparkly Latin-inspired crafts that are stunning to look at yet surprisingly easy to make.

The Crafty Chica is back! In The Crafty Chica Creates!, a revised and expanded edition of The Crafty Chica Collection, Kathy Cano Murillo enthusiastically welcomes you into her world of making and affirmational thinking with colorful, Latin-style craft projects inspired by her Mexican heritage.

With 45 projects—26 completely new joining 19 previous favorites—get fun techniques for painting, sewing, mixed media, clay, and paper crafts using affordable and recycled materials. While some are more in-depth than others, the projects are ideal for all skill levels. The Crafty Chica welcomes you to infuse the projects with elements of your own cultural heritage to make them personal and unique.

Each project is presented with a materials list, clear step-by-step instructions, a large photo of the finished project, and the personal and cultural history behind it.

Organized by category—Clothing, Artful Affirmations, Home Accessories, Jewelry and Accessories, Garden Decorations, and Fiesta—the projects include:

  • Milagros (miracle charms) layered resin phone grip
  • Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) papier-mache dog sculpture
  • Stamped clay folk-art boxes and ring dish
  • A stunning poncho made from Mexican scarves
  • A picture frame upcycled with an embroidered blouse

 
As you embrace the Latino culture or let your cultural heritage shine with creative crafts, you’ll discover:

  • Innovative ways to work with a wide range of materials, including air-dry clay, resin, and fabric
  • How to fully embrace vivid color palettes
  • Ways of repurposing everyday supplies into gorgeous art pieces that make great gifts
  • Great techniques for sculpting, sewing, painting, and embellishing that will boost skills and confidence

 
Whether you are looking for dazzling things to make for group crafting, to decorate your casa or workplace, to release stress and lift your mood, or for gift giving, The Crafty Chica Creates! is your friendly, inspiring guide.

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Oil Pastel Masterpieces in 4 Easy Steps

Anna Koliadych

Breathtaking, Vibrant, Simple—Your Must-Have Guide to Everything Oil Pastels

Master the art of creating stunning oil pastel drawings under the guidance of Anna Koliadych, the creator of DearAnnArt and the bestselling author of 15-Minute Watercolor Masterpieces. Let her walk you through 50 gorgeous, four-step projects and teach you all the must-know oil pastel tips and techniques you need to create vivid landscapes, botanicals, cute animals and more.

Revel in dozens of beautiful projects that will spark your creativity. Try your hand at recreating the Aurora Borealis, or draw a breathtaking Magical Lightning landscape. Compose some Autumn Forest Mushrooms, a Blooming Sakura or even a Fluffy Sheep. And with only four steps, every project is assured to be a breeze. Each step is also accompanied by a photo, so you can effortlessly follow along! Anna’s experience as an art educator makes it easy for beginners to jump right in, and her expertise guarantees that even pros will find something new to learn.

With straightforward, no-fluff directions and dozens of projects to inspire you, you’ll work your way from novice to master in a matter of pages.

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Creative Drawing: Symbols and Sacred Geometry

Ana Victoria Calderon

Learn simple step-by-step techniques for drawing and embellishing the exciting, inspiring, and beautiful motifs of sacred geometry.

In Creative Drawing: Symbols and Sacred Geometry, artist, instructor, and author Ana Victoria Calderon takes you on an inner voyage of creative discovery.

  • Learn how sacred geometry has been practiced and celebrated by cultures all over the world and influenced artists throughout history, including Leonardo da Vinci
  • Start with the essentials—compass drawing with graphite pencils on paper—then explore the featured mediums for embellishing, including colored pencils, watercolor, inks, and other easy-to-use mediums
  • Take a step-by-step look at fundamental drawing techniques for a variety of universal motifs, starting with the simple circle and building to more complex motifs, including the Yin Yang symbol, the Tree of Life, the Torus, and the Vortex
  • Learn to paint a variety of stunning effects and find great project ideas for creating amazing images


The study and creation of sacred geometry inspires the imagination and provokes reflection. So grab your pencils and take a beautiful creative journey with drawing!

Perfect for creative beginners, the books in the Art for Modern Makers series take a fun, practical approach to learning about and working with paints and other art mediums to create beautiful DIY projects and crafts.

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The Beginner's Guide to Wheel Throwing

Julia Claire Weber

“An excellent guide for those aspiring to take up pottery making. […] While nothing can replace hands-on instruction, this book comes close.” ―Library Journal Starred Review

Ready, set, throw! If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at the pottery wheel, or if you have ever taken a class and walked away wishing you knew more, you’ve come to the right place.

Welcome to the wheel, from artist and instructor Julia Claire Weber. In The Beginner’s Guide to Wheel Throwing, you’ll find all you need to develop the skills (and patience) you need to make your first forms. You’ll start at the beginning of the process with a tour through a typical ceramics studio, a discussion of the best clays for throwing, as well as a variety of centering methods. Then unleash your creativity with the chapters that follow. You’ll find:

  • Starter projects like cups, bowls, and plates to hone your skills.
  • Tutorials on important topics like trimming and handles.
  • A unique decal workshop, unlocking the potential of image transfer.

Throughout the book, skill-building is front and center, with tips and tricks to help you crack the code and make pieces you’re proud of. Gallery work from some of today's top artists are sure to inspire potters of all levels. What will you make first?

For beginners and those returning to ceramics, the Essential Ceramics Skills series from Quarry Books offer the fundamentals along with fresh, contemporary, and simple projects that build skills progressively.

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Collage Your Life

Melanie Mowinski

Requiring minimal equipment--just scissors, glue, paper, and pens--collage is an accessible craft that offers limitless creative possibilities. Like meditation or journaling, making collage can be an avenue for self-reflection and artistic exploration. In Collage Your Life, artist and teacher Melanie Mowinski teaches a variety of core techniques including lettering, stamping, stenciling, transfers, and adhesive methods, and provides dozens of prompts to jumpstart the creative process and encourage crafters to explore the versatility of collage, such as: make a self-portrait; disrupt your routine instincts; incorporate text; assemble mementos from a trip; process anger or anxiety; collage with others; or try creating block-out poetry with pages from a magazine. Inspiring examples of the author's work along with that of other collage artists are featured throughout. Crafters, journaling fans, scrapbookers, and artists alike will find guidance and support for developing their own distinctive collage style, whether the goal is to create a visual record of daily experiences and special occasions or to expand a creative journaling practice.
 

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Carry

Toni Jensen

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE * A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author's encounters with gun violence.

Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize * Goop Book Club Pick * "Essential . . . We need more voices like Toni Jensen's, more books like Carry."--Tommy Orange, New York Times bestselling author of There There

Toni Jensen grew up around guns: As a girl, she learned to shoot birds in rural Iowa with her father, a card-carrying member of the NRA. As an adult, she's had guns waved in her face near Standing Rock, and felt their silent threat on the concealed-carry campus where she teaches. And she has always known that in this she is not alone. As a Métis woman, she is no stranger to the violence enacted on the bodies of Indigenous women, on Indigenous land, and the ways it is hidden, ignored, forgotten.

In Carry, Jensen maps her personal experience onto the historical, exploring how history is lived in the body and redefining the language we use to speak about violence in America. In the title chapter, Jensen connects the trauma of school shootings with her own experiences of racism and sexual assault on college campuses. "The Worry Line" explores the gun and gang violence in her neighborhood the year her daughter was born. "At the Workshop" focuses on her graduate school years, during which a workshop classmate repeatedly killed off thinly veiled versions of her in his stories. In "Women in the Fracklands," Jensen takes the reader inside Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and bears witness to the peril faced by women in regions overcome by the fracking boom.

In prose at once forensic and deeply emotional, Toni Jensen shows herself to be a brave new voice and a fearless witness to her own difficult history--as well as to the violent cultural landscape in which she finds her coordinates. With each chapter, Carry reminds us that surviving in one's country is not the same as surviving one's country.

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A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Alicia Elliott

"In her raw, unflinching memoir . . . she tells the impassioned, wrenching story of the mental health crisis within her own family and community . . . A searing cry." —New York Times Book Review

The Mohawk phrase for depression can be roughly translated to "a mind spread out on the ground." In this urgent and visceral work, Alicia Elliott explores how apt a description that is for the ongoing effects of personal, intergenerational, and colonial traumas she and so many Native people have experienced.

Elliott's deeply personal writing details a life spent between Indigenous and white communities, a divide reflected in her own family, and engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, art, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, and representation. Throughout, she makes thrilling connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political.

A national bestseller in Canada, this updated and expanded American edition helps us better understand legacy, oppression, and racism throughout North America, and offers us a profound new way to decolonize our minds.

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Thunder in the Mountains

Daniel J. Sharfstein

The epic clash of two American legends—their brutal war and a battle of ideas that defined America after Reconstruction.

Oliver Otis Howard thought he was a man of destiny. Chosen to lead the Freedmen’s Bureau after the Civil War, the Union Army general was entrusted with the era’s most crucial task: helping millions of former slaves claim the rights of citizens. He was energized by the belief that abolition and Reconstruction, the country’s great struggles for liberty and equality, were God’s plan for himself and the nation. To honor his righteous commitment to a new American freedom, Howard University was named for him.

 

But as the nation’s politics curdled in the 1870s, General Howard exiled himself from Washington, D.C., rejoined the army, and was sent across the continent to command forces in the Pacific Northwest. Shattered by Reconstruction’s collapse, he assumed a new mission: forcing Native Americans to become Christian farmers on government reservations.

Howard’s plans for redemption in the West ran headlong into the resistance of Chief Joseph, a young Nez Perce leader in northeastern Oregon who refused to leave his ancestral land. Claiming equal rights for Native Americans, Joseph was determined to find his way to the center of American power and convince the government to acknowledge his people’s humanity and capacity for citizenship. Although his words echoed the very ideas about liberty and equality that Howard had championed during Reconstruction, in the summer of 1877 the general and his troops ruthlessly pursued hundreds of Nez Perce families through the stark and unforgiving Northern Rockies. An odyssey and a tragedy, their devastating war transfixed the nation and immortalized Chief Joseph as a hero to generations of Americans.

Recreating the Nez Perce War through the voices of its survivors, Daniel J. Sharfstein’s visionary history of the West casts Howard’s turn away from civil rights alongside the nation’s rejection of racial equality and embrace of empire. The conflict becomes a pivotal struggle over who gets to claim the American dream: a battle of ideas about the meaning of freedom and equality, the mechanics of American power, and the limits of what the government can and should do for its people. The war that Howard and Joseph fought is one that Americans continue to fight today.

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Native American Landmarks and Festivals

Yvonne Wakim Dennis

A state-by-state (and Canada too!) tour of monuments, events, sites, and festivals of Indigenous American history

From ancient rock drawings, historic sites, and modern museums to eco- and cultural tourism, sports events and powwows, the Native American Landmarks and Festivals: A Traveler's Guide to Indigenous United States and Canada provides a fascinating tour of the rich heritage of Indigenous people across the continent. Whether it's the annual All Indian Rodeo in Las Vegas, Nevada, a dog-sledding trek in Arctic Bay, Nunavut, or a rough ride to the ancient Kaunolu Village Site on Lanai, Hawaii, there is lots more to experience in the Indigenous world right around the corner, including ...

  • The Montezuma Castle National Monument
  • Trail of Tears National Historic Trail
  • The Red Earth Festival in Oklahoma City
  • The Autry Museum of the American West
  • The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center
  • The Thunderbird Powwow
  • The First Nations Film and Video Festival in various cities and states
  • The Angel Mounds State Memorial
  • The Harvest Moon American Indian Festival
  • The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
  • Canada's National Aboriginal Veterans Monument
  • And hundreds more!

    Native American Landmarks and Festivals guides the traveler to 729 landmarks, sites, festivals, and events in all 50 states and Canada. Travelers not only read about the history and traditions for each site, but maps, photos, illustrations, addresses and websites are also included to help further exploration. This book lets the reader choose from a vast array of "authentic" adventures such as dog sledding, camping in a tipi, hunting and fishing expeditions, researching the history with the people who made the history, making crafts, herbal walks, building and sailing in canoes, hiking along ancient routes, exploring rock art, and preparing and eating Native foods. Organized by region, Indigenous enterprises are included in state and federal parks, including federal and international heritage sites, public and private museums and non-Native events that include Indigenous voice. This convenient reference also has a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to its usefulness. Whether traveling by car, plane, or armchair, Native American Landmarks and Festivals: A Traveler's Guide to Indigenous United States and Canada will bring hours of enjoyable discovery.

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The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

David Treuer

FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Named a best book of 2019 by The New York Times, TIMEThe Washington Post, NPRHudson BooksellersThe New York Public LibraryThe Dallas Morning News, and Library Journal.


"Chapter after chapter, it's like one shattered myth after another." - NPR

"An informed, moving and kaleidoscopic portrait... Treuer's powerful book suggests the need for soul-searching about the meanings of American history and the stories we tell ourselves about this nation's past.." - New York Times Book Review, front page

A sweeping history—and counter-narrative—of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present.


The received idea of Native American history—as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well.

Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear—and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence—the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention.

In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.

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Born of Lakes and Plains

Anne F. Hyde

A fresh history of the West grounded in the lives of mixed-descent Native families who first bridged and then collided with racial boundaries.

Often overlooked, there is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin. Beginning in the seventeenth century, Native peoples—Ojibwes, Otoes, Cheyennes, Chinooks, and others—formed new families with young French, English, Canadian, and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous. These families built cosmopolitan trade centers from Michilimackinac on the Great Lakes to Bellevue on the Missouri River, Bent’s Fort in the southern Plains, and Fort Vancouver in the Pacific Northwest. Their family names are often imprinted on the landscape, but their voices have long been muted in our histories. Anne F. Hyde’s pathbreaking history restores them in full.

 

Vividly combining the panoramic and the particular, Born of Lakes and Plains follows five mixed-descent families whose lives intertwined major events: imperial battles over the fur trade; the first extensions of American authority west of the Appalachians; the ravages of imported disease; the violence of Indian removal; encroaching American settlement; and, following the Civil War, the disasters of Indian war, reservations policy, and allotment. During the pivotal nineteenth century, mixed-descent people who had once occupied a middle ground became a racial problem drawing hostility from all sides. Their identities were challenged by the pseudo-science of blood quantum—the instrument of allotment policy—and their traditions by the Indian schools established to erase Native ways. As Anne F. Hyde shows, they navigated the hard choices they faced as they had for centuries: by relying on the rich resources of family and kin. Here is an indelible western history with a new human face.

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The Four Agreements

Don Miguel Ruiz

In The Four Agreements, bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

•  A New York Times bestseller for over a decade
•  Translated into 48 languages worldwide
 
“This book by don Miguel Ruiz, simple yet so powerful, has made a tremendous difference in how I think and act in every encounter.” — Oprah Winfrey

“Don Miguel Ruiz’s book is a roadmap to enlightenment and freedom.” — Deepak Chopra, Author, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

“An inspiring book with many great lessons.” — Wayne Dyer, Author, Real Magic

“In the tradition of Castaneda, Ruiz distills essential Toltec wisdom, expressing with clarity and impeccability what it means for men and women to live as peaceful warriors in the modern world.” — Dan Millman, Author, Way of the Peaceful Warrior

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Poet Warrior

Joy Harjo

National bestseller
An ALA Notable Book

Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life.

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

 

Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth—owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member.

Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

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Indigenous Continent

Pekka Hämäläinen

There is an old, deeply rooted story about America that goes like this: Columbus “discovers” a strange continent and brings back tales of untold riches. The European empires rush over, eager to stake out as much of this astonishing “New World” as possible. Though Indigenous peoples fight back, they cannot stop the onslaught. White imperialists are destined to rule the continent, and history is an irreversible march toward Indigenous destruction.

Yet as with other long-accepted origin stories, this one, too, turns out to be based in myth and distortion. In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals. From the Iroquois in the Northeast to the Comanches on the Plains, and from the Pueblos in the Southwest to the Cherokees in the Southeast, Native nations frequently decimated white newcomers in battle. Even as the white population exploded and colonists’ land greed grew more extravagant, Indigenous peoples flourished due to sophisticated diplomacy and leadership structures.

By 1776, various colonial powers claimed nearly all of the continent, but Indigenous peoples still controlled it—as Hämäläinen points out, the maps in modern textbooks that paint much of North America in neat, color-coded blocks confuse outlandish imperial boasts for actual holdings. In fact, Native power peaked in the late nineteenth century, with the Lakota victory in 1876 at Little Big Horn, which was not an American blunder, but an all-too-expected outcome.

Hämäläinen ultimately contends that the very notion of “colonial America” is misleading, and that we should speak instead of an “Indigenous America” that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial. The evidence of Indigenous defiance is apparent today in the hundreds of Native nations that still dot the United States and Canada. Necessary reading for anyone who cares about America’s past, present, and future, Indigenous Continent restores Native peoples to their rightful place at the very fulcrum of American history.

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The Mosquito Bowl

Buzz Bissinger

"Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights is an American classic. With The Mosquito Bowl, he is back with a true story even more colorful and profound. This book too is destined to become a classic. I devoured it." -- John Grisham

An extraordinary, untold story of the Second World War in the vein of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat, from the author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war - the invasion of Okinawa--their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled: Former All Americans, captains from Wisconsin and Brown and Notre Dame, and nearly twenty men who were either drafted or would ultimately play in the NFL.

When the trash-talking between the 4th and 29th over who had the better football team reached a fever pitch, it was decided: The two regiments would play each other in a football game as close to the real thing as you could get in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal. The bruising and bloody game that followed became known as "The Mosquito Bowl."

Within a matter of months, 15 of the 65 players in "The Mosquito Bowl" would be killed at Okinawa, by far the largest number of American athletes ever to die in a single battle. The Mosquito Bowl is the story of these brave and beautiful young men, those who survived and those who did not. It is the story of the families and the landscape that shaped them. It is a story of a far more innocent time in both college athletics and the life of the country, and of the loss of that innocence.

Writing with the style and rigor that won him a Pulitzer Prize and have made several of his books modern classics, Buzz Bissinger takes us from the playing fields of America's campuses where boys played at being Marines, to the final time they were allowed to still be boys on that field of dirt and coral, to the darkest and deadliest days that followed at Okinawa.

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I Want to Thank You

Gina Hamadey

An inspiring guide to saying thank you, one heartfelt note at a time.

We all know that gratitude is good for us--but the real magic comes when we express it. Writer Gina Hamadey learned this life-changing lesson firsthand when a case of burnout and too many hours on social media left her feeling depleted and disconnected. In this engaging book, she chronicles how twelve months spent writing 365 thank-you notes to strangers, neighbors, family members, and friends shifted her perspective. Her journey shows that developing a lasting active gratitude practice can make you a happier person, heal complicated relationships, and reconnect you with the people you love--all with just a little bit of bravery at the mailbox.

How can we turn an often-dreaded task into a rewarding act of self-care that makes us feel more present, joyful, and connected? Whether we're writing to a long-lost friend, a helpful neighbor, or a child's teacher, this inspiring book helps us reflect on meaningful memories and shared experiences and express ourselves with authenticity, vulnerability, and heart. Informed by Hamadey's year of discovery as well as interviews with experts on relationships, gratitude, and more, this deceptively simple guide offers a powerful way to jump-start your joy.

Hamadey found herself thanking not only family members and friends, but less expected people in her sphere, including local shopkeepers, physical therapists, long-ago career mentors, favorite authors, and more. Once you get going, you might find yourself cultivating an active gratitude practice, too--one heartfelt note of thanks at a time.

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The Gratitude Diaries

Janice Kaplan

In this New York Times bestseller, Janice Kaplan spends a year living gratefully and transforms her marriage, family life, work, and health. 
On New Year’s Eve, journalist and former Parade editor in chief Janice Kaplan makes a promise to be grateful and look on the bright side of whatever happens. She realizes that how she feels over the next year will have less to do with the events that occur than her own attitude and perspective. Getting advice at every turn from psychologists, academics, doctors, and philosophers, Kaplan brings readers on a smart and witty journey to discover the value of appreciating what you have.

Relying on both amusing personal experiences and extensive research, Kaplan explores how gratitude can transform every aspect of life, including marriage and friendship, money and ambition, and health and fitness. She learns how appreciating your spouse changes the neurons of your brain and why saying thanks helps CEOs succeed. Through extensive interviews with experts, and lively conversations with real people, including celebrities like Matt Damon, Daniel Craig, and Jerry Seinfeld, Kaplan discovers the role of gratitude in everything from our sense of fulfillment to our children’s happiness.
 
With warmth, humor, and appealing insight, Kaplan’s journey will empower readers to think positively and start living their own best year ever. 

 

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Magnolia Table

Joanna Gaines

#1 New York Times Bestseller

Magnolia Table is infused with Joanna Gaines' warmth and passion for all things family, prepared and served straight from the heart of her home, with recipes inspired by dozens of Gaines family favorites and classic comfort selections from the couple's new Waco restaurant, Magnolia Table.

Jo believes there's no better way to celebrate family and friendship than through the art of togetherness, celebrating tradition, and sharing a great meal. Magnolia Table includes 125 classic recipes—from breakfast, lunch, and dinner to small plates, snacks, and desserts—presenting a modern selection of American classics and personal family favorites. Complemented by her love for her garden, these dishes also incorporate homegrown, seasonal produce at the peak of its flavor. Inside Magnolia Table, you'll find recipes the whole family will enjoy, such as:

  • Chicken Pot Pie
  • Chocolate Chip Cookies
  • Asparagus and Fontina Quiche
  • Brussels Sprouts with Crispy Bacon, Toasted Pecans, and Balsamic Reduction
  • Peach Caprese
  • Overnight French Toast
  • White Cheddar Bisque
  • Fried Chicken with Sticky Poppy Seed Jam
  • Lemon Pie
  • Mac and Cheese

Full of personal stories and beautiful photos, Magnolia Table is an invitation to share a seat at the table with Joanna Gaines and her family.

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Tartine Bread (Artisan Bread Cookbook, Best Bread Recipes, Sourdough Book)

Chad Robertson

The Tartine Way - Not all bread is created equal

"...The most beautiful bread book yet published..." – The New York Times

Tartine - A bread bible for the home baker or professional bread-maker! It comes from Chad Robertson, a man many consider to be the best bread baker in the United States, and co-owner with Elizabeth Prueitt of San Francisco's Tartine Bakery. At 5 P.M., Chad Robertson's rugged, magnificent Tartine loaves are drawn from the oven. The bread at San Francisco's legendary Tartine Bakery sells out within an hour almost every day.

Only a handful of bakers have learned the bread science techniques Chad Robertson has developed: To Chad Robertson, bread is the foundation of a meal, the center of daily life, and each loaf tells the story of the baker who shaped it. Chad Robertson developed his unique bread over two decades of apprenticeship with the finest artisan bakers in France and the United States, as well as experimentation in his own ovens. Readers will be astonished at how elemental it is.

Bread making the Tartine Way: Now it's your turn to make this bread with your own hands. Clear instructions and hundreds of step-by-step photos put you by Chad's side as he shows you how to make exceptional and elemental bread using just flour, water, and salt.

If you liked Tartine All Day by Elisabeth Prueitt, Chad's partner in work and life, and Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish, you'll love Tartine Bread! Additional categories for this book include:

  • Baking Books
  • Baking Recipe Books
  • Baking Cook Books
  • Bread Recipe Books
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Mastering Bread

Marc Vetri

From a master of the artisan bread movement comes a comprehensive guide to making incredible bread at home, featuring more than 70 delicious recipes

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

“Here, finally, is the one bread book that every cook needs on their kitchen worktable.”—Andrew Zimmern, host of Bizarre Foods

The Vetri Cucina Bread Program began over a decade ago and has been part of the American movement to reclaim high-quality bread as a cornerstone of our food culture. In Mastering Bread, Marc Vetri and his former head baker, Claire Kopp McWilliams, show home cooks how to create simple breads with unique flavors in a home oven. 
 
Included are more than seventy recipes for their bestselling sourdough and yeast loaves as well as accompaniments to serve with the breads. Their process of bread-making is broken down into three easy-to-digest chapters: Mix, Shape, and Bake. Another chapter includes recipes for enjoying breadin dishes such as Bruschetta, Panzanella, and Ribollita. There’s even a bonus chapter revealing the secrets of Vetri’s coveted Panettone. This book shares everything that Vetri and McWilliams have learned over the years about the art and science of making incredible bread. They explain how to use fresh milled and whole-grain flours as well as local and regional wheat varieties, with easy instructions for adapting bread recipes for success with whatever flour is available in your market. Included throughout are bios and interviews with grain farmers, millers, and bread bakers from around the nation.

Mastering Bread is a master class from an award-winning chef who makes world-class artisan bread easy to bake for both home cooks and professionals alike.

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Art of the Pie

Kate Mcdermott

"A new baking bible." (*Wall Street Journal)
"If there's such a thing as a pie guru, it's Kate McDermott." (*Sunset Magazine)
"The next best thing to taking one of her classes."(*The Washington Post)
"Gorgeous...a dream of a cookbook." (*Eat Your Books)
"Heartwarming and funny...an instructive debut." (*Library Journal)
"Utterly exquisite, will steal your heart. RUN, don't walk, to order your copy. (**The Blender Girl)
"Not just on crusts and fillings but life itself. A keeper." (***Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
"Whether you're a seasoned pie hand or a beginner with more enthusiasm than skill, Kate's got you covered." (Dorie Greenspan)
"One of the best books written on the topic." (Publishers Weekly)

Kate McDermott, who learned to make pie from her Iowa grandmother, has taught the time-honored craft of pie-making to thousands of people. Here she shares her secrets to great crusts (including gluten-free options), fabulous fillings, and to living a good life. This is the only PIE cookbook you need.

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The Book on Pie

Erin Jeanne McDowell

Look no further than The Book on Pie for the only book on pie you'll ever want or need.

Erin Jeanne McDowell, New York Times contributing baker extraordinaire and top food stylist, wrote the book on pie, a comprehensive handbook that distills all you'll ever need to know for making perfect pies. The Book on Pie starts with the basics, including ways to mix pie dough for extra flaky crusts, storage and freezing, recipe size conversions, and expert tips for decorating and styling, before diving into the recipes for all the different kinds of pies: fruit, custard, cream, chiffon, cold set, savory, and mini. Find everything from classics like Apple Pie and Pumpkin Pie, to more inspired recipes like Birthday-Cake Pie and Caramel Pork Pie with Chile and Scallions.

Erin also suggests recommended pie doughs and toppings with each recipe for infinitely customizable pies: Mix and match Pumpkin Spice Pie Dough and Dark Chocolate Drippy Glaze with the Pumpkin Pie, or sub in the Chive Compound-Butter Crust for the Croque Madame Pielets . . . the possibilities are endless. With helpful tips, photographic guides, and inspirations--pie-deas--it's almost like having Erin in the kitchen baking pies with you.

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Vegan Holiday Cookbook

Katie Culpin

75 Veganized Seasonal Classics for Family and Friends 

Are you vegan—and do you dread Thanksgiving because your family insists on a traditional turkey? Or are you a nonvegan family member welcoming everyone home for the Christmas holidays—and you’re scratching your head over what to cook for your newly vegan son or daughter-in-law?

Holiday feasts have always been contentious for vegans and their nonvegan family members—when a supposedly welcoming season of loved ones dining together becomes divisive when animal products are cooked as part of tradition. Vegan Holiday Recipes addresses this issue head-on and unites family and friends, vegan or not, over simply delicious, easy, healthy, seasonal food.
 
Containing seventy-five plant-based recipes specifically designed with Christmas and Thanksgiving in mind, this is the ultimate book for vegans, the vegan-curious, and their families and loved ones. The book will also include menu designs for the perfect festive lunch or dinner get together. Learn to prepare vegan breakfasts, snacks, drinks, main meals, sides, and, of course, desserts:
 

  • Potato Rosti and French Toast for Breakfast
  • Artichoke Dip and Macadamia Dill Cheese for Snacks
  • Mushroom and Parsnip Soup and Sweet Potato Salad
  • Pecan and Mushroom Wellington and Cheesy Broccoli Bake for Mains
  • Roast Vegetable Stuffing and Mashed Potato and Gravy for Sides
  • Pecan Caramel Pie and Nutmeg Cookies for Sweets
  • Mulled Apple Cider and Hot Chocolate for Drinks
  • And more!


Bring festive joy during the holiday season and inspire everyone with a delicious, inclusive table.
 

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From Harvest to Home

Alicia Tenise Chew

A gorgeous photo-driven lifestyle guide filled with autumnal activities, easy DIYs, and cozy recipes, for anyone who loves the fall season.

Crisp air. Vibrant foliage. Chunky sweaters. Pumpkin everything.

For anyone who loves all things fall, FROM HARVEST TO HOME is a stunning celebration of this cozy season. Brimming with gorgeous photography and tons of autumnal activities, creative décor projects, and delicious recipes, this beautiful lifestyle guide will inspire readers to make the most of this enchanting time of year.

Learn how to craft an eye-catching fall wreath. Plan an epic tailgate party. Host a spooky movie marathon with the ultimate watch list. Get inspired to go apple picking, then make Cardamom Ginger Apple Butter. Design an exquisite tablescape using decorative gourds, greenery, and candles for a Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving celebration.

All these ideas and more are presented in an attractive package with foil on the cover that makes a thoughtful, seasonal gift alongside a scarf, a thermos, or a fall-themed candle.

WIDE APPEAL: Who doesn't love fall?! It's an undeniably beautiful, cozy season. This inviting, visually driven book will appeal to people of all ages who look forward to fall, decorate their homes for the season, and uphold traditions with friends or family, like going to football games, baking pies, or hosting a Halloween party. From Harvest to Home provides all the inspiration you could ever need to make the most out of this wonderful time of year.

BEAUTIFUL TO GIFT & DISPLAY: With foil on the cover and evocative photography of pumpkin patches, apple orchards, and country roads, as well as styled shots of seasonal food, drink, and crafts, From Harvest to Home is a stunning celebration of autumn. Display it on your coffee table alongside a fall-themed candle, a mini pumpkin, or a bowl of Halloween candy. Snuggle up by the fireplace with a cup of tea and flip through the pages to get inspired. Or, give it to the person in your life who loves all things fall--it's a perfect gift alongside a mug or knit throw.

UNIQUE OFFERING: Despite the large audience of people who love fall, there are no fall-themed lifestyle guides on the market. This is the first!

Perfect for:

  • Anyone who loves the fall season
  • People who visit the pumpkin patch or apple orchard every year
  • People who decorate their house for fall
  • PSL (Pumpkin Spice Latte) drinkers

People looking for a seasonal housewarming, hostess, back-to-school, or Thanksgiving gift

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The Complete Autumn and Winter Cookbook

America's Test Kitchen

Celebrate the season with this treasure trove of cozy cooking and baking recipes, from soul-warming soups and simple dinners to showstoppers and weekend projects.

As the air grows chillier and nights longer, these dishes draw us to the table and the warmth of an active kitchen: Slow-simmered dishes like Cider-Braised Pork Roast, cheesy weeknight pasta like Unstuffed Shells with Butternut Squash, or a crusty bread like Fig and Fennel Bread.

When the flavors of summer fade, autumn and winter fruits and vegetables can be just as bold and bountiful. Find recipe inspiration from the season's first ripe figs and plump brussels sprouts to roasty sides featuring celery root, kohlrabi, and kabocha squash, or a cranberry curd tart to brighten a winter's night.

Themed chapters showcase all the reasons to love autumn and winter cooking:

  • Find new celeberation favorites with a chapter of centerpiece dishes like Turkey and Gravy for a Crowd or Swiss Chard Pie to wow your guests.
  • Picked apples on an autumnal adventure? All Things Apple covers both sweet and savory recipes like French Apple Cake and Celery Root, Fennel, and Apple Chowder to help you use them up.
  • Create the ultimate party spread with chapters devoted to Appetizers, Festive Drinks, and Brunch: Try fried Korean fried chicken wings, latkes with beet-horseradish applesauce, or Everything Straws.
  • Obsessed with pumpkin? So are we! In the Everyone Loves Pumpkin chapter you'll find everything from Creamy Pumpkin-Chai Soup to Rum Pumpkin Chiffon Pie.
  • Bake to your heart's content with chapters covering breads, cookies, cakes, pies, puddings, and more.
  • Give the gift of food with recipes for Rocky Road Bark and Fruits of the Forest Liqueur.

  • America's Test Kitchen's tips and tricks guarantee every meal is a success. Flip to the introduction for menus and entertaining tips. Plus, we've added seasonally themed spreads throughout so you can decorate the perfect holiday cookies or plan a charcuterie board with last-second appetizers.

 

 

 

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The Sagrada Familia

Gijs van Hensbergen

An illuminating biography of one of the most famous--and most famously unfinished--buildings in the world, the Sagrada Familia of Barcelona.

The scaffolding-cloaked spires of Antoni Gaudí's masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia, dominate the Barcelona skyline and draw in millions of visitors every year. More than a century after the first stone was laid in 1882, the Sagrada Familia remains unfinished, a testament to Gaudí's quixotic ambition, his religious devotion, and the sensuous eccentricity of his design. It has defied the critics, the penny-pinching accountants, the conservative town-planners, and the devotees of sterile modernism. It has enchanted and frustrated the citizens of Barcelona. And it has passed through the landmark changes of twentieth-century Spain, surviving two World Wars, the ravages of the Spanish Civil War, and the "Hunger Years" of Franco's rule.

Gijs van Hensbergen's The Sagrada Familia explores the evolution of this remarkable building, working through the decades right up to the present day before looking beyond to the final stretch of its construction. Rich in detail and vast in scope, this is a revelatory chronicle of an iconic structure, its place in history, and the wild genius that created it.

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A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes

Rodrigo Garcia

"This is a beautiful farewell to two extraordinary people. It enthralled and moved me, and it will move and enthrall anyone who has ever entered the glorious literary world of Gabriel García Márquez."--Salman Rushdie

"In A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes Rodrigo Garcia finds the words that cannot be said, the moments that signal all that is possible to know about the passage from life to death, from what love brings and the loss it leaves. With details as rich as any giant biography, you will find yourself grieving as you read, grateful for the profound art that remains a part of our cultural heritage."--Walter Mosley, New York Times bestselling author of Down the River Unto the Sea

"An intensely personal reflection on [Garcia's] father's legacy and his family bonds, tender in its treatment and stirring in its brevity."--Booklist (starred review)

The son of one of the greatest writers of our time--Nobel Prize winner and internationally bestselling icon Gabriel García Márquez--remembers his beloved father and mother in this tender memoir about love and loss.

In March 2014, Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century, came down with a cold. The woman who had been beside him for more than fifty years, his wife Mercedes Barcha, was not hopeful; her husband, affectionately known as "Gabo," was then nearly 87 and battling dementia. I don't think we'll get out of this one, she told their son Rodrigo.

Hearing his mother's words, Rodrigo wondered, "Is this how the end begins?" To make sense of events as they unfolded, he began to write the story of García Márquez's final days. The result is this intimate and honest account that not only contemplates his father's mortality but reveals his remarkable humanity.

Both an illuminating memoir and a heartbreaking work of reportage, A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes transforms this towering genius from literary creator to protagonist, and paints a rich and revelatory portrait of a family coping with loss. At its center is a man at his most vulnerable, whose wry humor shines even as his lucidity wanes. Gabo savors affection and attention from those in his orbit, but wrestles with what he will lose--and what is already lost. Throughout his final journey is the charismatic Mercedes, his constant companion and the creative muse who was one of the foremost influences on Gabo's life and his art.

Bittersweet and insightful, surprising and powerful, A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes celebrates the formidable legacy of Rodrigo's parents, offering an unprecedented look at the private family life of a literary giant. It is at once a gift to Gabriel García Márquez's readers worldwide, and a grand tribute from a writer who knew him well.

"You read this short memoir with a feeling of deep gratitude. Yes, it is a moving homage by a son to his extraordinary parents, but also much more: it is a revelation of the hidden corners of a fascinating life. A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes is generous, unsentimental and wise." --Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling

"A warm homage filled with both fond and painful memories." --Kirkus

Garcia's limpid prose gazes calmly at death, registering pain but not being overcome by it . . . the result is a moving eulogy that will captivate fans of the literary lion. -- Publishers Weekly

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Children of the Land

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

An NPR Best Book of the Year

A 2020 International Latino Book Award Finalist

An Entertainment Weekly, The Millions, and LitHub Most Anticipated Book of the Year

This unforgettable memoir from a prize-winning poet about growing up undocumented in the United States recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man's attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence.

"You were not a ghost even though an entire country was scared of you. No one in this story was a ghost. This was not a story."

When Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision, but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary.

With beauty, grace, and honesty, Castillo recounts his and his family's encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster, of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support his family, of his father's deportation and the decade that he spent waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry, and of his mother's heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor.

Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.

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The Undocumented Americans

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.
“Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard.”—Selena Gomez

FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD
• NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AND TIME

Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she’d tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell.  So she wrote her immigration lawyer’s phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own. 
 
Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented—and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the singular, effervescent characters across the nation often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects. 
 
In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival. 
 
In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.

 

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The Hurting Kind

Ada Limón

An astonishing collection about interconnectedness--between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves--from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

"I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers," writes Limón. "I am the hurting kind." What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world's pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings--and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they "do not / care to be seen as symbols"?

With Limón's remarkable ability to trace thought, The Hurting Kind explores those questions--incorporating others' stories and ways of knowing, making surprising turns, and always reaching a place of startling insight. These poems slip through the seasons, teeming with horses and kingfishers and the gleaming eyes of fish. And they honor parents, stepparents, and grandparents: the sacrifices made, the separate lives lived, the tendernesses extended to a hurting child; the abundance, in retrospect, of having two families.

Along the way, we glimpse loss. There are flashes of the pandemic, ghosts whose presence manifests in unexpected memories and the mysterious behavior of pets left behind. But The Hurting Kind is filled, above all, with connection and the delight of being in the world. "Slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still / green in the morning's shade," writes Limón of a groundhog in her garden, "she is doing what she can to survive."

 

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Crying in the Bathroom

Erika L. Sánchez

From the New York Times bestselling author of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, an utterly original memoir-in-essays that is as deeply moving as it is hilarious

Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the nineties, Erika Sánchez was a self-described pariah, misfit, and disappointment—a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy, often laughing so hard with her friends that she had to leave her school classroom. Twenty-five years later, she’s now an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, but she’s still got an irrepressible laugh, an acerbic wit, and singular powers of perception about the world around her.

In these essays, Sánchez writes about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression, revealing an interior life rich with ideas, self-awareness, and perception. Raunchy, insightful, unapologetic, and brutally honest, Crying in the Bathroom is Sánchez at her best—a book that will make you feel that post-confessional high that comes from talking for hours with your best friend.

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Woman Without Shame

Sandra Cisneros

A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street.

It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home--in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.

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In the Shadow of the Mountain

Silvia Vasquez-Lavado

“In climbing the Seven Summits, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado did nothing less than take back her own life—one brave step at a time. She will inspire untold numbers of souls with this story, for her victory is a win on behalf of all of us.”—Elizabeth Gilbert

Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her page-turning, pulse-raising memoir chronicling her journey to Mount Everest.

A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent—the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains and death’s close proximity—woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest.

“The Mother of the World,” as it’s known in Nepal, allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn’t go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her. It was never easy. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking, and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But, there were also moments of peace, joy, and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward.

In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of heroism, one which awakens in all of us a lust for adventure, an appetite for risk, and faith in our own resilience.

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Finding Latinx

Paola Ramos

Young Latinos across the United States are redefining their identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many of them--Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns--are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost sixty million Latinos in the U.S. has been represented. No longer.

In this empowering cross-country travelogue, journalist and activist Paola Ramos embarks on a journey to find the communities of people defining the controversial term, "Latinx." She introduces us to the indigenous Oaxacans who rebuilt the main street in a post-industrial town in upstate New York, the "Las Poderosas" who fight for reproductive rights in Texas, the musicians in Milwaukee whose beats reassure others of their belonging, as well as drag queens, environmental activists, farmworkers, and the migrants detained at our border. Drawing on intensive field research as well as her own personal story, Ramos chronicles how "Latinx" has given rise to a sense of collectivity and solidarity among Latinos unseen in this country for decades.

A vital and inspiring work of reportage, Finding Latinx calls on all of us to expand our understanding of what it means to be Latino and what it means to be American. The first step towards change, writes Ramos, is for us to recognize who we are.

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The Man who Could Move Clouds

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

From the author of the critically acclaimed novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree, comes a dazzling, kaleidoscopic memoir reclaiming her family's otherworldly legacy.

"The Man Who Could Move Clouds is the work of a genius, a wildly moving, profound, groundbreaking, often hilarious book that I'll reread until I die." --R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother's fortune-telling clients, very little seemed out of the ordinary. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called "the secrets" the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit "the secrets," Rojas Contreras' mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water.

But this had always felt like a story that belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, in her twenties, Rojas Contreras' suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to "the secrets."

In 2012, spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey home to Colombia to disinter Nono's remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often hilarious guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse.

Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.

This is a memoir like no other . . . Ingrid Rojas Contreras has given us a glorious gift with these pages. --Patricia Engel, author of Infinite Country

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Solito

Javier Zamora

READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • A young poet tells the unforgettable story of his harrowing migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this moving, page-turning memoir hailed as “the mythic journey of our era” (Sandra Cisneros)
“A new landmark in the literature of migration, and in nonfiction writ large.”—Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River

Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.”  
 
Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.
 
At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.
 
A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.

 

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The Beginners Guide to Growing Great Vegetables

Lorene Edwards Forkner

“For new and novice gardeners who want a straightforward, unfussy guide to growing their own food.” —Library Journal

You can grow beautiful, healthy, delicious veggies and herbs right from the start—just follow the trustworthy advice found in The Beginner’s Guide to Growing Great Vegetables. Expert gardener Lorene Edwards Forkner shares all the information you need to create a thriving garden, from facts about soil and sun to tips on fertilizing, mulching, and watering. Regional planting charts show what to plant when, and a month-by-month planner takes you from January through December. Profiles of popular edibles explain exactly how to plant, care for, and harvest your bounty. Whether your garden grows in the ground, on a balcony, or in containers on a sunny patio, this is your guide to grow-your-own success. Your backyard bounty awaits!

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Plant Grow Harvest Repeat

Meg McAndrews Cowden

“Wonderfully written, beautifully illustrated, and everything you need to know to get more productivity out of your food garden.” —Joe Lamp’l, creator and executive producer, Growing a Greener World

Discover how to get more out of your growing space with succession planting—carefully planned, continuous seed sowing—and provide a steady stream of fresh food from early spring through late fall.
 
Drawing inspiration from succession in natural landscapes, Meg McAndrews Cowden teaches you how to implement lessons from these dynamic systems in your home garden. You’ll learn how to layer succession across your perennial and annual crops; maximize the early growing season; determine the sequence to plant and replant in summer; and incorporate annual and perennial flowers to benefit wildlife and ensure efficient pollination. You’ll also find detailed, seasonal sowing charts to inform your garden planning, so you can grow more anywhere, regardless of your climate.
 
Plant Grow Harvest Repeat will inspire you to create an even more productive, beautiful, and enjoyable garden across the seasons—every vegetable gardener’s dream.

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The Farm Girl's Guide to Preserving the Harvest

Ann Accetta-Scott

Food preservation is one of the most intimidating aspects of homesteading, yet one of the most important. Although there is a plethora of websites, books and blogs dedicated to learning how to preserve the harvest, people must search multiple places in order to gather the necessary information. For a beginner new to the world of preserving this leaves them frustrated and quite discouraged. The ideal tool for a newbie is a detailed reference guide, one such as The Farm Girl's Guide to Preserving the Harvest, that shares the basics on canning, dehydrating, freezing, fermenting, curing, and smoking, and how to use the right tools for each method. Homesteader and blogger Ann Accetta-Scott guides readers at the beginning, moderate or advanced levels of preserving. Newcomers to the world of preserving can start with a simple jam and jelly recipe using a hot water bath canner, while others may be advanced enough to have mastered the pressure canner and are ready to move onto curing and smoking meat and fish. The progression in this book will help the home preserver build confidence in the most common methods of preserving.

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The Family Garden Plan

Melissa K. Norris

Grow a Year’s Worth of Food for Your Family

Do something good for your loved ones by learning how to plant a garden that will yield wholesome, organic fruits and vegetables in surprisingly less space than you would think. Melissa K. Norris, fifth-generation homesteader and host of the popular Pioneering Today podcast, walks you through each step of the process, including how to

  • decide which food crops are best for your area and family
  • plan your garden to maximize the space you have
  • protect your garden from common pests and diseases naturally
  • determine when your fruits and vegetables are ready to be harvested
  • improve soil health with simple techniques like crop rotation and backyard composting  

Sharing the same practices and techniques from her homestead, Melissa shows you how easy it can be to raise a year’s worth of produce at home. Simple-to-follow charts, worksheets, and photographs are provided throughout to help you through every phase of the gardening process.     

You can enjoy good eating and greater well-being for you and your family.

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Backyard Homesteader

Alison Candlin

The essential beginner's manual on living a greener, healthier, and more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Absolutely all you need to know to provide you and your family with homegrown food throughout the year. Alison Candlin offers easy-to-follow advice on planning, establishing, and maintaining a small-acre farm, an allotment, or a backyard garden. She also includes essential tips for selecting, housing, and looking after chickens, goats, pigs, bees, and other animals. Learn how to collect and recycle water, compost your leftover scraps, and generate renewable energy for your own home in order to save money and minimize your impact on the environment. With step-by-step instructions and more than 350 photographs and charming illustrations, this book is a practical and comprehensive guide to living off the land.

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Grow More Food

Colin McCrate

Just how productive can one small vegetable garden be? More productive than one might think! Colin McCrate and Brad Halm, former CSA growers and current owners of the Seattle Urban Farm Company, help readers boost their garden productivity by teaching them how to plan carefully, maximize production in every bed, get the most out of every plant, scale up systems to maximize efficiency, and expand the harvest season with succession planting, intercropping, and season extension.
 
Along with chapters devoted to the Five Tenets of a Productive Gardener (Plan Well to Get the Most from Your Garden; Maximize Production in Each Bed; Get the Most out of Every Plant; Scale up Tools and Systems for Efficiency; and Expand and Extend the Harvest), the book contains interactive tools that home gardeners can use to assist them in determining how, when, and what to plant; evaluating crop health; and planning and storing the harvest. For today’s vegetable gardeners who want to grow as much of their own food as possible, this guide offers expert advice and strategies for cultivating a garden that supplies what they need.

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