Other books that might interest you

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  Every Person in New York

  Jason Polan

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  From the late artist’s unfinished project, a compendium of drawings capturing the characters, and character, of New York City. 
   
  Jason Polan was on a mission to draw every person in New York, from cab drivers to celebrities. He drew people eating at Taco Bell, admiring paintings at the Museum of Modern Art, and sleeping on the subway. With a foreword by Kristen Wiig, Every Person in New York, Volume 1 collects thousands of Polan’s energetic drawings in one chunky book. As full as a phone book and as invigorating as a walk down a bustling New York street, this is a love letter of sorts to a beloved city and the people who live there. 
   
  “In 2008, illustrator Jason Polan set out to capture the enormous human poetics compressed in Gotham’s geographic smallness by drawing every person in the city. The first seven years of this ongoing project, totaling drawings of 30,000 people, are now collected in Every Person in New York—a marvelous tome of Polan’s black-and-white line drawings, colored in with the intense aliveness of a city where, as E.B. White wrote more than half a century earlier, “wonderful events are taking place every minute.” What emerges is a kind of poetry—fragmentary glimpses of ideas and images, commanded by an internal rhythm to paint a complete whole of this human hive.” —Brain Pickings 
   
  “This digest of sketches brings to life the everyday moments of New Yorkers and finds a spark of excitement in the sometimes-banal shuffle of city living.” —Monocle magazine 
   
  “Polan’s drawings exude, in unbroken but flexible lines, the momentum of a Manhattan streetscape with only brief moments of stillness. Those pauses can last minutes or over an hour, enough time for fully textured, impressionistic portraits. But more often Mr. Polan’s drawings are of scenes that pass in seconds: a father ordering hot dogs for his stubborn children, or Diane Keaton trying to hail a cab.” —The New York Times

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  Collection of Sand

  Italo Calvino

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  This “brilliant collection of essays” and travelogues by the celebrated author of Invisible Cities “may change the way you see the world around you” (The Guardian, UK).   Italo Calvino’s boundless curiosity and ingenious imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, his last collection of new works published during his lifetime. Delving into the delights of the visual world—both in art and travel—the subjects of these 38 essays range from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens. In Calvino’s words, this collection is “a diary of travels, of course, but also of feelings, states of mind, moods…The fascination of a collection lies just as much in what it reveals as in what it conceals of the secret urge that led to its creation” (from Collection of Sand).   Never before translated into English, Collection of Sand is an incisive and often surprising meditation on observation and knowledge, “beautifully translated by Martin McLaughlin” (The Guardian, UK).

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  Dueling the Dragon - Adventures...

  Abdiel LeRoy

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  China — Superpower or Basket Case? You decide!  
  (Author's narration) 
  A wide-eyed expat is detained by Beijing cops and told to sign a false confession. Will he make it out of China alive? 
  Dueling the Dragon is a great adventure story, but this one just happens to be true! 
  With a journalist's eye and lively wit, LeRoy exposes the deep levels of corruption tearing at China's social fabric. You will learn of college students sold into slavery, media suppression of pollution reports, and persecution of a broadcaster just trying to do his job! 
  Yet there is delight amid the despair, reverie amid the revulsion, as LeRoy encounters China's "raven-haired beauties". You'll laugh away the tears with this riveting memoir! 
  "An adventure, a memoir, and certainly one of the more entertaining books about China before us today." 
  San Francisco Review of Books 
  “Shows China in a ‘behind-the-curtain’ way that is informative, entertaining, and absolutely thrilling, even with the despairs and triumphs.” 
  Amy’s Bookshelf Reviews 
  “A fascinating portrait of a time, a place, and a man for readers who want to know more about the ‘real’ China. Very well written and revealing.” 
  G. Miki Hayden

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  The New Deal in Orange County...

  Charles Epting

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  This historical tour explores how FDR’s domestic programs helped revitalize a region devastated by natural disasters and the Great Depression.   While many people are familiar with the New Deal’s sweeping initiatives, few have a nuanced sense of what this “alphabet soup” of organizations actually did on a local level. In this fascinating book, historian Christopher Epting looks at the various New Deal projects undertaken in Orange County, showing how they met the myriad needs of its struggling communities.   Unpredictably harsh elements wreaked havoc in Orange County during the Great Depression. The Long Beach earthquake of 1933 and the 1938 Santa Ana River flood took numerous lives, decimated buildings and destroyed much of the county's namesake citrus industry. In response, Orange County received federal public aid through the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps and other agencies. Epting reveals their efforts in this tour of the buildings, bridges, harbors, trails, libraries, highways and other infrastructure gains—many still in use—that were revitalized by President Roosevelt’s New Deal.

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  America - An Anthology of France...

  François Busnel

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  Today’s leading French writers offer their perspective of a post-2016 America in this collection of pieces from the bestselling French literary magazine. 
   
  From Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America to the moveable feasts of the Lost Generation, France and the United States have long shared a special relationship, defined as much by romantic fascination as occasional incomprehension. François Busnel, host of the acclaimed literary talk show La Grande Librairie, seeks to bridge this gap with America, a journal of literature and politics conceived in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, now available to English readers for the first time. 
   
  In this insightful collection of pieces from the magazine, Alain Mabanckou sketches the outlines of his Los Angeles, where he finds a sense of belonging far from his home country of the Republic of the Congo. Leïla Slimani considers the ways #MeToo is shaping a new discourse around consent on college campuses, and Philippe Besson takes an old-fashioned road trip through the American heartland as he drives from Chicago to New Orleans. Joël Dicker traipses through Yellowstone National Park on the lookout for grizzlies, while Alice Zeniter wanders the scorching streets of Las Vegas on foot. Featuring a poignant interview with National Book Award winner Louise Erdrich and original work in English by luminaries including Richard Powers, Colum McCann, and Laura Kasischke, America suggests a new way of understanding the enduring relationship between France and the United States, one that has never been read in quite this way before. 
   
  From the streets of Manhattan to the Wyoming wilderness, across rural Pennsylvania’s Amish country to the bright lights of Hollywood, America takes us on a crisscrossing road trip across the country as it archives accounts of the administration of the past four years and offers a moving testament to the essential power of literature to unite in times of division. 
   
  Praise for America 
   
  “Busnel presents a fine anthology of essays originally published in the French quarterly America. . . . The writers’ varied approaches mean that, even for readers familiar with the issues at play, the pieces will be consistently entertaining. As such, an American audience should lap up this thought-provoking tour.” —Publishers Weekly 
   
  “A form of sophisticated literary activism.” —Literary Hub 
   
  “While we wait for the “great works” inspired by the Trump era, the novelists and reporters at America will continue to discover the country that elected him, painting a picture while leaving prejudice to one side.” —France-Amérique 
   
  “A kaleidoscopic reading list of a divided nation.” —Columbia Journalism Review

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  Vodka & Sandstorms - What is...

  Luke Richmond

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  Adventurer, B.A.S.E jumper, endurance athlete and writer, Luke Richmond is a man on a mission: to cram as much living into his lifetime as humanly possible. 
  As an overweight and bullied youth, he seemed destined to be the underdog, but fought back until his tormentors were cast aside. From the Australian outback, to climbing some of the biggest mountains on earth, to rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, his enthusiasm and passion for adventure is infectious. 
  This is the blistering first-hand account of his most recent expeditions; including a 57 day 1805 kilometre crossing of the Gobi Desert on foot, kayaking the 2220 kilometre length of the Murray River and an ocean row to New Zealand that doesn’t quite go to plan. Within these pages he also shares his lessons from the edge about controlling fear, high risk decision making and how to travel around Australia for free. 
  So hold on tight, you’re in for a wild ride with the man who has become known as the Tasmanian Dare Devil.

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