Books & Books @ The Studios is partnering with May Sands Montessori school on a Community Book Fair, Saturday, May 18, 2019. Shoppers who present the event coupon will enable a donation to the school with their purchases. Books & Books will donate 10% of net purchases from coupon sales to support the school. Shoppers using the coupon will also have the opportunity to enter a raffle for a $50 Books & Books gift card.
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Trying to decide what to get Mom? Books are always a good choice.
And if you don’t know what she’s read, a gift card will give her a chance to find her #nextfavoriteread.
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2019 by Vulture, The Millions, The Observer, and O, The Oprah Magazine
A razor-sharp, deeply felt new novel–the twenty-first book by Ann Beattie–about the complicated relationship between a charismatic teacher and his students, and the secrets we keep from those we love
At a boarding school in New Hampshire, Ben joins the honor society led by Pierre LaVerdere, an enigmatic, brilliant, yet perverse, teacher who instructs his students not only about how to reason, but how to prevaricate. As the years go by, LaVerdere’s covert and overt instruction lingers in his students’ lives as they seek some sense of purpose or meaning. When Ben feels the pace of his life accelerating and views his intimate relationships as less and less fulfilling, there seems to be a subtext he’s not able to access. And what, really, did Bailey Academy teach him?
While relationships with his stepmother and sister improve, and a move to upstate New York offers respite from his anxiety about love and work, LaVerdere’s reappearance in his life disturbs his equilibrium. Everything he once thought he knew about his teacher–and himself–is called into question. Written by one of our most iconic writers, known for casting a cold eye on her generation’s ambivalence and sometimes mistaken ambition, A Wonderful Stroke of Luck is a keenly observed psychological study of a man who alternates between careful driving and hazardous risk taking, as he struggles to incorporate his past into the vertiginous present.
Ann Beattie has published twenty-one books and lives with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry, in Maine. She is a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Praise for A Wonderful Stroke of Luck
“Even if you’re not old enough to remember the thrill of reading Beattie’s first-ever story to be published in The New Yorker, you’ll find that the short fiction master’s latest foray into long form is a marvel of wry wit and wisdom.”
—O, the Oprah magazine
“Given a week on a deserted island with a shelf of boarding-school novels, I’d start off with A Separate Peace, plow through Prep for the tenth time, and then end with A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, Beattie’s foray into the #MeToo movement, which asks how deeply we internalize the lessons of charismatic, if vaguely nefarious, teachers. . . . A master class.”
—Hillary Kelly, Vulture
“How do our charismatic teachers set the stage for the rest of our lives? That’s one of the questions that Ann Beattie tackles in this novel. When a former New England boarding school student named Ben looks back on his childhood, he starts to question the motives of his superstar teacher. Later on, his teacher gets in contact, and Ben has to grapple with his legacy.”
—The Millions (a Most Anticipated Book of 2019)
“I would read anything by Beattie.”
—Lila Shapiro, Vulture (a Most Anticipated Book of 2019)
“[Beattie’s] elegantly sculpted tale is both wrenchingly sad and ultimately enigmatic: as usual.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Gimlet-eyed Beattie has created a stunningly unnerving and provocative tale spiked with keen cultural allusions and drollery. This jarring dissection of privilege and anxiety, gender expectations, lust, ludicrous predicaments, defensive selfishness, moral confusion, and numbing loneliness projects a matrix of angst somewhat countered by the solace and sustenance found in a quiet life far from the grasping, hurried, hostile world. . . . Beattie’s literary reign continues apace, thanks to her stealthily eviscerating insights and disquieting wit.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Beattie’s latest novel . . . is riven with hope and humor. . . . [A] postmodernist Greek tragedy. . . . Laugh-out-loud humorous. . . . Beattie [has] a keen ear for not only what is said but also what is left unsaid, often with tragic consequences.”
—BookPage
Praise for Ann Beattie
“Unshakably intelligent, deep-hearted. . . . One feels amazed at the confidence, steadiness, and quality of [Beattie’s] writing.” —Lorrie Moore, The New York Times Book Review on Park City
“Beattie’s wry voice, intimate narration, and tart characterization remain instantly recognizable.” —Christopher Cox, The Paris Review‘s Art of Fiction interview
“As much as anyone’s in the past fifty years . . . Ann Beattie’s lifework defines what the short story can do, the extent of human life it can encompass.” —Jonathan Lethem on The New Yorker Stories
“Full of echoes and resonant fractures, and so beguiling in its eerie simplicity. I read it twice.” —Miranda July on Walks with Men
“A very funny book. . . . If Jane Austen had been crossed with Oscar Wilde and re-crossed with early Evelyn Waugh, and the result plonked down among the semi-beautiful people of late 20th century media-fringe America . . . the outcome might have been something like this.” —Margaret Atwood, The Chicago Sun Times on Love Always
“Ann Beattie yet again reveals herself as one of literature’s most liberating figures.”
—Howard Norman, The Washington Post on The Accomplished Guest
“[Beattie] punctures her characters’ pretensions and jadedness with an economy and effortless dialogue that writers have been trying to emulate for three decades, though few, if any, have matched her seamless combination of biting wit and mordant humor, precise irony and consummate cool.” —The New York Times Book Review editors on The New Yorker Stories, a Top 10 Book of 2010
“Women Talking is an eloquent exploration of how a group mind coalesces — as a kind of vision that comes in fits and starts, arguments and digression — to finally arrive at a decision. Or, read another way, it’s a compelling examination of the opposing voices in our own heads as we wrestle with impossible choices between the known and the unknown. What’s most compelling about Toews’ novel is its lack of sensationalism and how it shows real people struggling through the aftermath of devastating violence. Grounded in a religious culture where suffering and obedience are an expectation, these women grapple with uneasy answers to what’s best for themselves and their children. Women Talking is the quiet, startling story of coming to terms with how, or if, we save ourselves.”
— Steve Mitchell, Scuppernong Books, Greensboro, NC
NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * ESQUIRE * VULTURE * BUZZFEED * BOSTON GLOBE * AV CLUB’s * NYLON * MEDIUM * THE MILLIONS * HUFFINGTON POST * THE RUMPUS * LIT HUB * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY * THE WEEK * AM New York * USA TODAY * LOS ANGELES TIMES
“This amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of The Handmaid’s Tale.” –Margaret Atwood, on Twitter
One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.
While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women-all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in-have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?
Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.
Miriam Toews is the author of six previous bestselling novels, All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, and Irma Voth, and one work of nonfiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award. She lives in Toronto.
“Miriam Toews is wickedly funny and fearlessly honest… She is an artist of escape; she always finds a way for her characters, trapped by circumstance, to liberate themselves.” — The New Yorker
“The book is a feminist manifesto that delicately unwraps the horror, but also bubbles with the love and wry humor that has endeared Toews to readers.” — The New York Times
“A painful, thought-provoking, strangely lovely gem rendered broadly relevant by our #MeToo moment….At the heart of Women Talking lies the question of how women can create a better world for themselves and for those they love amid a culture of male sexual violence, the continued power of patriarchy, their own differences, and the limits of language itself. It’s a question that resonates across the globe today, and in answering it, we could do much worse than to start with the manifesto of the women of Molotschna: “We want our children to be safe . . . We want to be steadfast in our faith. We want to think.” — The Boston Globe
“Astonishing . . . Toews, who has written often about her own Mennonite history, has told a riveting story that is both intensely specific and painfully resonant in the wider world. Women Talking is essential, elemental.” — USA Today
“Lean, bristling . . . a remarkably layered and gripping story. . . The book’s confined setting and its tight timeframe combine to superb dramatic effect.” — Wall Street Journal
“An astonishment, a volcano of a novel with slowly and furiously mounting pressures of anguish and love and rage. No other book I’ve read in the past year has spoken so lucidly about our current moment, and yet none has felt as timeless; the always-wondrous Miriam Toews has written a book as close to a Greek tragedy as a contemporary Western novelist can come.” — Lauren Groff, author of FATES AND FURIES and FLORIDA
“The award-winning novelist returns with what may be her most experimental work yet, giving voice to eight women as they grapple with the trauma and power of patriarchy.” — Entertainment Weekly, “50 Most Anticipated Books of 2019”
“I am in awe of this novel. In Toews’s brilliant design, eight women in a Mennonite hayloft manage to lay bare the rancid global root system of patriarchy. Their story is terrifying, joyful, gruesome, and magnetic. What a reckoning–and what a gift.” — Leni Zumas, author of RED CLOCKS
“I would follow the Canadian author anywhere she leads – this time to a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia where the women have been subjected to brutal attacks in the night first believed to be the work of demons. When they discover the atrocities were committed by men in their community, the women – who cannot read or write and require the group’s schoolteacher to write down their conversations – must decide whether they will leave, exiting the only world they’ve known, or remain.” — Huffington Post, “61 Books We’re Looking Forward to Reading in 2019”
“This stark, masterful story takes a timely look at ideas of justice and agency.” — Esquire, The Best Books to Read This Spring
“One of the most exciting novels coming out this year.” — LitHub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2019”
“Sharp and devastating… a testament to the power of women’s collective voices.” — Buzzfeed
“Toews nimbly navigates this complicated story, laden with relevant political overtones, offering a scathing condemnation of the patriarchy, as well as a sense of hope for a future run by those who won’t stay silent about the horrors around them.” — Nylon, “50 Books You’ll Want to Read in 2019”
“A flawless, ferocious work of art. I have yet to read a more scathing indictment of patriarchal violence, or a more illuminating quest to comprehend the most vital contours of the human experience: what is agency, what is meaning, what is justice, what is love. This is the kind of novel that changes you. Get ready.” — Laura van den Berg, author of THE THIRD HOTEL
“Miriam Toews has written a modern classic as real and warm and terrifying as a pail of fresh blood. It’s a perfect work of art that will leave you ill with awe.” — Catherine Lacey, author of THE ANSWERS and NOBODY IS EVER MISSING
“[A] sharp blade of a novel . . . Toews’ knowing wit and grasp of dire subjects align her with Margaret Atwood, while her novel’s slicing concision and nearly Socratic dialogue has the impact of a courtroom drama or a Greek tragedy.” — Booklist, Starred Review
“Powerful . . . This is an inspiring and unforgettable novel.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“An exquisite critique of patriarchal culture . . . riveting and revelatory . . . Stunningly original and altogether arresting.” — Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Unforgettable.” — PureWow
“Women Talking wants another world to be possible, and in the re-scripting of reality into fiction, attempts to imagine it where it has not yet grown of its own volition . . . The novel reminds us how difficult it is to know how to live, forgive others or ourselves, seek justice, or know freedom. No matter the depth of their solidarity, we can imagine that each individual will undoubtedly spend a lifetime coming to their own answers, seeking knowledge with their own hard-won words. But we can hope that the common questions asked by women talking, by Women Talking–their listening, their anger and love, their sometimes vastly differing conclusions–might offer a further way of seeing and finally choosing.” — Madeleine Thien, author of DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING, Literary Review of Canada
“WOMEN TALKING is one of the most anticipated books of the year for a reason. The story (based on true events) focuses on eight Mennonite women who – after being repeatedly drugged and attacked by a group of men in their community – meet in secret and decide how to reclaim their lives not just for their own future, but also for their daughters.” — Woman’s Day, Best Fiction Books of 2019
“Mary Laura Philpott writes about today’s American woman in her marvelously frank and witty book of essays, I Miss You When I Blink. Women of all ages will nod their heads when reading about the decision to have babies (or not), the pitfalls of volunteering, the difficulty of getting a cat out from under the bed, the reward of crossing things off ‘the list,’ the challenge of finding time for relaxation, and, above all, the acceleration of time as we age. Philpott shares pivotal moments from her life in such a relatable way that, through both laughter and tears, readers will exclaim, ‘Yes, yes, this is ME!’ Don’t miss this gem!”
— Nancy Simpson-Brice, Book Vault, Oskaloosa, IA
One of 2019’s Most Anticipated Books: BuzzFeed, Bustle, HelloGiggles, LitHub, She Reads
Acclaimed essayist and bookseller Mary Laura Philpott presents a charmingly relatable and wise memoir-in-essays about what happened after she checked off all the boxes on her successful life’s to-do list and realized she might need to reinvent the list—and herself.
Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy.
But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right,” but she felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options?
In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you’re going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that?
Like a pep talk from a sister, I Miss You When I Blink is the funny, poignant, and deeply affecting book you’ll want to share with all your friends, as you learn what Philpott has figured out along the way: that multiple things can be true of us at once—and that sometimes doing things wrong is the way to do life right.
Mary Laura Philpott writes essays that examine the overlap of the absurd and the profound in everyday life. Her writing has been featured in print or online by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, and other publications. She’s the founding editor of Musing, the online magazine of Parnassus Books, as well as an Emmy-winning cohost of the show A Word on Words on Nashville Public Television. She also wrote and illustrated the humor book Penguins with People Problems, a quirky look at the embarrassments of being human. Mary Laura lives in Nashville with her family.
“Mary Laura Philpott is relentlessly funny, self-effacing and charming as she tells the story of living as a triple-A-plus perfectionist. Everything in her life is done on time and exactly right, until, of course, it all starts to fall apart. In her willingness to tell her own story, she taps into a universal truth for so many women: We plan to do it all until we find we can’t do anything anymore. I Miss You When I Blink made me laugh, it made me cry. I miss it already.”
— Ann Patchett, author of This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage and Commonwealth
“Mary Laura Philpott is a writer, artist, and creator of singular spark and delight. I adore her, and I love her work. Thank God she has finally written a memoir! By offering these dispatches from her own life experience, she leaves us thinking about ourselves—where we’ve been, where we’re going, and who we really want to be.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic
“Infinitely relatable. Beautifully written. I’m ready to read it again.”
— Jenny Lawson, author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy
“What I love most about Mary Laura Philpott and her wonderful book is that she—self-proclaimed type A, obsessive achiever—gives herself permission to change. This book is inspiring for those of us with small children underfoot and forty close on the horizon. Mary Laura is a generous and funny guide to the midlife conundrums.”
— Emma Straub, author of Modern Lovers
“At once rueful, hilarious, brave, and inspiring, I Miss You When I Blink is beautifully relatable and reassuring, even as it makes you pause and think. This marvelous collection of essays belongs on the bookshelf sandwiched between Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron. Mary Laura Philpott is going to make a whole lot of readers feel seen and understood.”
— Dani Shapiro, author of Hourglass
“Mary Laura Philpott is the friend you call when you want to cry but need to laugh. What a treat to spend time with her distinctive voice as she plumbs life’s quotidian moments to unearth deeper, universal truths. Wry, intelligent, and searingly honest, this book is a joy.”
— Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest
“I Miss You When I Blink is a delightful, thought-provoking collection of essays, written with such spark and vulnerability that I was alternately laughing out loud and gasp-sighing at its poignancy. Mary Laura Philpott shows us her real, flawed self in these pages, sharing when she’s made mistakes, when she’s been less than charitable, or when she wasn’t sure who she was ‘supposed’ to be. It’s easy to connect with her honesty, and damn fun to laugh at her jokes. This book is totally irresistible!”
— Edan Lepucki, author of California and Woman No. 17
“This wonderful memoir-in-essays from Nashville writer Mary Laura Philpott is a frank and funny look at what happens when, in the midst of a tidy life, there occur impossible-to-ignore tugs toward creativity, meaning, and the possibility of something more.”
— Southern Living
“Her collection of essays reads like a brutally honest conversation with your most relatable friend. It’ll make you feel infinitely less alone.”
— HelloGiggles
“In her memoir-in-essays, acclaimed writer Mary Laura Philpott addresses the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood and that inevitable “stuck” feeling so many of us become familiar with. Part confessional, part pep talk, I Miss You When I Blink is a reassuring read about learning how to accept that doing things wrong can be the way to do life right.”
— Bustle
“A funny and self-effacing memoir-in-essays from a bookseller who thought she had her whole life figured out (and had done everything right and gotten everything she wanted) only to wake up one day and realize that . . . she hadn’t. Relatable!”
— Lit Hub
“It feels like we are sitting at a table together and having the best conversation about all the things that truly matter. The tone is so perfect — calibrated and balanced — and I don’t know how she pulled that off. The result is a kind of wisdom in these essays that comes from making so many wrong turns they strangely add up to something that is exactly right.”
— Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal
“Heartwarming… Philpott’s prose is conversational and easy to settle into….Comforting and reassuring.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Warm, candid, and wise, Philpott’s book is both an extended reflection on the pressures of being female and a survivor’s tale about finding contentment by looking within and learning to be herself. Delightfully bighearted reading.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“A mosaic of a life changing in subtle rather than radical ways . . . Readers with their own sets of anxieties should be charmed by the author’s friendly tone, warm sense of humor, and relatable experiences.”
— Booklist
As the fiftieth anniversary of the first lunar landing approaches, the award winning historian and perennial New York Times bestselling author takes a fresh look at the space program, President John F. Kennedy’s inspiring challenge, and America’s race to the moon.
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”—President John F. Kennedy
On May 25, 1961, JFK made an astonishing announcement: his goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In this engrossing, fast-paced epic, Douglas Brinkley returns to the 1960s to recreate one of the most exciting and ambitious achievements in the history of humankind. American Moonshot brings together the extraordinary political, cultural, and scientific factors that fueled the birth and development of NASA and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects, which shot the United States to victory in the space race against the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
Drawing on new primary source material and major interviews with many of the surviving figures who were key to America’s success, Brinkley brings this fascinating history to life as never before. American Moonshot is a portrait of the brilliant men and women who made this giant leap possible, the technology that enabled us to propel men beyond earth’s orbit to the moon and return them safely, and the geopolitical tensions that spurred Kennedy to commit himself fully to this audacious dream. Brinkley’s ensemble cast of New Frontier characters include rocketeer Wernher von Braun, astronaut John Glenn and space booster Lyndon Johnson.
A vivid and enthralling chronicle of one of the most thrilling, hopeful, and turbulent eras in the nation’s history, American Moonshot is an homage to scientific ingenuity, human curiosity, and the boundless American spirit.
Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. In the world of public history, he serves on boards, at museums, at colleges, and for historical societies. The Chicago Tribune dubbed him “America’s New Past Master.” The New-York Historical Society has chosen Brinkley as its official U.S. Presidential Historian. His recent book Cronkite won the Sperber Prize, while The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He was awarded a Grammy for Presidential Suite and is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates in American studies. His two-volume, annotated Nixon Tapes recently won the Arthur S. Link–Warren F. Kuehl Prize. He is a member of the Century Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and three children.
www.douglasbrinkley.com
“At a time when national demoralization is so prevalent, Douglas Brinkley’s American Moonshot could not be more timely. His reconstruction of JFK’s bold commitment to space exploration and the heroic efforts of the men who made the “moonshot” a reality reminds us that America was and can be again a great principled nation that leads the world on to new frontiers.”
— Robert Dallek, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963
“Graced by Douglas Brinkley’s remarkable gift for writing richly textured, sympathetic social, cultural and biographical history, American Moonshotdelivers an epic narrative: it is the sweeping story of how humankind’s impetus for space exploration evolved from the early visionaries in Russia, Germany, and the United States at the dawn of the 20th century through the scientific and technological achievements–albeit associated human horrors–of two world wars, giving birth to the “Space Age” in peaceful ways even in the context of Cold War and its constant threat of nuclear confrontation. Brinkley’s special insights into the life of John F. Kennedy and how in May 1961 as U.S. president he made the audacious commitment of landing astronauts on the Moon “before the decade is out” makes this book a particularly intimate and fascinating read.”
— James R. Hansen, author of First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong
“Prepare to recall what it was like to be inspired and thrilled by American greatness. Doug Brinkley recounts, with deep research and exciting narrative, the bold spirit and faith in innovation that was embodied in Kennedy’s decision to launch a mission to the moon. His vision restored a vitality to America, something we could use today.”
— Walter Isaacson, author of Leonardo da Vinci
“American Moonshot is masterful. Pulsing with fresh new research, Douglas Brinkley’s latest book captures that Cold War moment when America made a magnificent leap into the heavens. Brinkley weaves the presidency, biography, and science into a gripping narrative, rewarding readers with a tour-de-force of the Space Race. This is history at its best.”
— Yanek Mieczkowski, author of Eisenhower’s Sputnik Moment: The Race for Space and World Prestige
“In an age when so little seems possible, Douglas Brinkley has taken us back to a moment when everything did. In telling the riveting story of John Kennedy and the race to the Moon, Brinkley explores the complexities of politics, diplomacy, technology, and, perhaps most important, of human nature itself. This is a great book.”
— Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
“Douglas Brinkley is not only a scholar, he’s a true storyteller. American Moonshot evokes and era, and brings to life the vivid personalities that accomplished one of the greatest feats in history.”
— Lawrence Wright, author of God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State
“American Moonshot is a thoroughly terrific work which should reach the widest possible audience. As a study in leadership, it is absolutely first rate. As history, it is inspiring and enthralling. And to cap it all, it is a completely riveting story about the Space Age. I love this book.”
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front During World War II
“A highly engaging history not just for space-race enthusiasts, but also students of Cold War politics….Prolific historian Brinkley avers that his latest is a contribution to “U.S. presidential history (not space studies).” However, in his customarily thorough way, it’s clear that he’s mastered a great deal of the fact and lore surrounding the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects that landed American astronauts on the moon 50 years ago.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Everything Handmaids wear is red: the colour of blood, which defines us.
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships. She serves in the household of the Commander and his wife, and under the new social order she has only one purpose: once a month, she must lie on her back and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if they are fertile. But Offred remembers the years before Gilead, when she was an independent woman who had a job, a family, and a name of her own. Now, her memories and her will to survive are acts of rebellion.
Provocative, startling, prophetic, The Handmaid’s Tale has long been a global phenomenon. With this stunning graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s modern classic, beautifully realized by artist Renée Nault, the terrifying reality of Gilead has been brought to vivid life like never before.
MARGARET ATWOOD, whose work has been published in thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, her novels include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize; The Year of the Flood; and her most recent, The Heart Goes Last. She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award, and lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson.
Renée Nault is a Canadian artist, illustrator, and graphic novelist known for her vivid watercolor and ink illustrations. Her work has appeared in books, magazines, newspapers, and advertising around the world. She is a frequent illustrator for the Los Angeles Times. Please visit www.reneenault.com.
From the bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes a new, timely, and visionary book about the dramatic and profound changes our world is undergoing right now–as seen from the perspective of the rising powers of the East.
“All roads used to lead to Rome. Now they lead to Beijing.” So argues Peter Frankopan in this revelatory new book.
In the age of Brexit and Trump, the West is buffeted by the tides of isolationism and fragmentation. Yet to the East, this is a moment of optimism as a new network of relationships takes shape along the ancient trade routes. In The New Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan takes us on an eye-opening journey through the region, from China’s breathtaking infrastructure investments to the flood of trade deals among Central Asian republics to the growing rapprochement between Turkey and Russia. This important book asks us to put aside our preconceptions and see the world from a new–and ultimately hopeful–perspective.
PETER FRANKOPAN is professor of global history at Oxford University. He is the author of The First Crusade: The Call from the East and The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. He lives in Oxford.
“Provocative reading for students of geopolitical and economic trends looking for a glimpse at the new world to come.”
–Kirkus
International Praise for The New Silk Roads:
“Masterly mapping out of a new world order… Peter Frankopan has gone up in the world since his bestselling Silk Roads history was published to great acclaim in 2015—and deservedly so.”
–Justin Marozzi, Evening Standard
“Frankopan has written another valuable and idiosyncratic book. He has the gift of perspective— the capacity to see the wood for the trees—which he combines with a Tolstoyan knack for weaving little details into the broader sweep of human affairs.”
–Jamie Susskind, The Daily Telegraph
“Frankopan is a brilliant guide to terra incognita.”
–Niall Ferguson, Sunday Times
“A pacy, bang-up-to-date exploration of how China’s commercial and political heft is changing the way the world works.”
–James Kynge, Financial Times
“Frankopan has written as prescient a modern history as possible … [His] skill is that he able to step back a few more paces from the world map and global events than most modern commentators, whilst encouraging us to use history as a way of looking forward than regressing into the past.”
–Joseph Wilkins, Total Politics
“A compelling, accessible account of the shift in global economic power… For anyone with an interest in global politics.”
–Nicole Abedee, Financial Review
“If you are only going to read one non-fiction book in the coming year, let it be The New Silk Roads by Dr. Frankopan… This book has all the answers and some more.”
–Qudsia Sajjad, News on Sunday
“[D]iverting, eclectic and has serious intent. Its thesis that Eurasia is developing a sense of cohesion, largely powered by China’s restless ambition, is a sound one.”
–Roger Boyes, The Times
“A state of the world address… Energetic…pin-sharp, up-to-date.”
–Ben East, The National (UAE)
The author of It’s Okay to Laugh and host of the popular podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking—interviews that are “a gift to be able to listen [to]” (New York Times)—returns with more hilarious meditations on her messy, wonderful, bittersweet, and unconventional life.
Life has a million different ways to kick you right in the chops. We lose love, lose jobs, lose our sense of self. For Nora McInerny, it was losing her husband, her father, and her unborn second child in one catastrophic year.
But in the wake of loss, we get to assemble something new from whatever is left behind. Some circles call finding happiness after loss “Chapter 2”—the continuation of something else. Today, Nora is remarried and mothers four children aged 16 months to 16 years. While her new circumstances bring her extraordinary joy, they are also tinged with sadness over the loved ones she’s lost.
Life has made Nora a reluctant expert in hard conversations. On her wildly popular podcast, she talks about painful experiences we inevitably face, and exposes the absurdity of the question “how are you?” that people often ask when we’re coping with the aftermath of emotional catastrophe. She knows intimately that when your life falls apart, there’s a mad rush to be okay—to find a silver lining, to get to the happy ending. In this, her second memoir, Nora offers a tragicomic exploration of the tension between finding happiness and holding space for the unhappy experiences that have shaped us.
No Happy Endings is a book for people living life after life has fallen apart. It’s a book for people who know that they’re moving forward, not moving on. It’s a book for people who know life isn’t always happy, but it isn’t the end: there will be unimaginable joy and incomprehensible tragedy. As Nora reminds us, there will be no happy endings—but there will be new beginnings.
As the host of American Public Media’s Gracie Award winning podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking, Nora McInerny brings empathy and wit to difficult subjects from gun control to sexual assault and the #MeToo movement. She is a contributor to Elle.com, Cosmopolitan.com, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Buzzfeed, Time.com, Slate, and Vox, where she’s often tapped for her essay pieces highlighting the emotional landscape and humor in complex topics, like the financial impacts of healthcare and grief in our digital age. She is the founder of the non-profit Still Kickin and the Hot Young Widows Club, an online group for people who have lost their significant other.
“No Happy Endings is the book for anyone who’s fallen down and is trying to pick themselves back up again. An emotionally honest and thoughtful read.”
— Popsugar
Everyone has a purpose. And, according to Oprah Winfrey, “Your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you are meant to be, and begin to honor your calling in the best way possible.”
That journey starts right here.
In her latest book, The Path Made Clear, Oprah shares what she sees as a guide for activating your deepest vision of yourself, offering the framework for creating not just a life of success, but one of significance. The book’s ten chapters are organized to help you recognize the important milestones along the road to self-discovery, laying out what you really need in order to achieve personal contentment, and what life’s detours are there to teach us.
Oprah opens each chapter by sharing her own key lessons and the personal stories that helped set the course for her best life. She then brings together wisdom and insights from luminaries in a wide array of fields, inspiring readers to consider what they’re meant to do in the world and how to pursue it with passion and focus. Renowned figures such as Eckhart Tolle, Brene Brown, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jay-Z, and Ellen DeGeneres share the greatest lessons from their own journeys toward a life filled with purpose.
Paired with over 100 awe-inspiring photographs to help illuminate the wisdom of these messages, The Path Made Clear provides readers with a beautiful resource for achieving a life lived in service of your calling – whatever it may be.
Through the power of media, Oprah Winfrey has created an unparalleled connection with people around the world. As host and supervising producer of the top-rated, award-winning The Oprah Winfrey Show, she entertained, enlightened, and uplifted millions of viewers for twenty-five years. Her accomplishments as a global media leader and philanthropist have established her as one of the most respected and admired public figures today.
