D'autres livres qui pourraient vous intéresser

• 

  Cactus Country - A Boyhood Memoir

  Zoë Bossiere

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A STRIKING MEMOIR OF GENDERFLUIDITY, CLASS, AND THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST 
   
  Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zoë enters a world of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled palo verde trees. In Cactus Country RV Park, Zoë has been given a fresh start and a new, shorter haircut. Although Zoë doesn’t have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy—and here, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Zoë spends hot days chasing shade and freight trains with an ever-rotating pack of sunburned desert kids, and nights fending off his own questions about the body underneath his baggy clothes. 
   
  As Zoë enters adolescence, he must reckon with the sexism, racism, substance abuse, and violence endemic to the working-class men he’s grown close to, whose hard masculinity seems as embedded in the desert landscape as the cacti sprouting from parched earth. In response, Zoë adopts an androgynous style and new pronouns, but still cannot escape what it means to live in a gendered body, particularly when a fraught first love destabilizes their sense of self. But beauty flowers in this desert, too. Zoë persists in searching for answers, dreaming of a day they might leave the park behind to embrace whatever awaits beyond. 
   
  Equal parts harsh and tender, Cactus Country is a precisely rendered journey of self-determination that will resonate with anyone who’s ever had to fight to be themself. 
   
  “Cactus Country shimmers with the complexity of becoming. Zoë Bossiere writes their way into a truer story of selfhood, resisting the simpler narratives the world demanded. The result is lush, beautiful, and deeply liberating.”—Alex Marzano Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

  Voir livre

• 

  Understanding the Hillbilly...

  Damian Ference

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Flannery O’Connor is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Her novels and short stories—shockingly violent, absurdly comic, spiritually potent—continue to entertain, beguile, and transform readers of all backgrounds to this day.  For many encountering them for the first time, O’Connor’s stories of backwoods prophets and outcasts feel strangely nihilistic and dark. Others familiar with her letters and essays appreciate the deep Catholic understanding of sin and grace that animates them. In this new book, Fr. Damian Ference proposes a more precise lens for decoding Flannery O’Connor’s narrative art, one that originates in O’Connor’s own words about herself: Hillbilly Thomism. The author examines the various ways in which St. Thomas Aquinas and the philosophical tradition of Thomism shaped not only O’Connor’s view of reality but also the stories she told to help us see and know it.    Featuring an impressive array of biographical and literary evidence and extended analysis of her short stories “The River,” “Parker’s Back,” and “The Displaced Person,” Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist is an important look at the intersection of medieval philosophy and modern fiction in one of the most treasured artists of the American South. 

  Voir livre

• 

  The American Revolution and...

  Charles River Editors

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The American Revolution is replete with seminal moments that every American learns in school, from the “shot heard ‘round the world” to the Declaration of Independence, but the events that led up to the fighting at Lexington & Concord were borne out of 10 years of division between the British and their American colonies over everything from colonial representation in governments to taxation, the nature of searches, and the quartering of British regulars in private houses. From 1764-1775, a chain of events that included lightning rods like the Townshend Acts led to bloodshed in the form of the Boston Massacre, while the Boston Tea Party became a symbol of nonviolent protest.  
  	The political and military nature of the Revolutionary War was just as full of intrigue. While disorganized militias fought the Battles of Lexington & Concord, George Washington would lead the Continental Army in the field while men like Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia and Benjamin Franklin negotiated overseas in France. Benedict Arnold would become one of his nation’s most vital war heroes and its most notorious traitor, French forces would play a crucial role at the end of the war, and the Treaty of Paris would conclude the Revolution with one last great surprise.  
  	The early years of the French Revolution were fueled by Enlightenment ideals, seeking the social overthrow of the caste system that gave the royalty and aristocracy decisive advantages over the lower classes. But history remembers the French Revolution in a starkly different way, as the same leaders who sought a more democratic system while out of power devolved into establishing an incredibly repressive tyranny of their own once they acquired it.  
  The height of Republican France’s tyranny came during a 10-month period forever known as the Reign of Terror, the most notorious and arguably most memorable part of the French Revolution.

  Voir livre

• 

  Politics and the English Language

  George Orwell

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice.   
  MOST people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. 
  Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

  Voir livre

• 

  Broken Trust - Greed...

  Samuel P. King, Randall W. Roth

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop was the largest landowner and richest woman in the Hawaiian kingdom. Upon her death in 1884, she entrusted her property--known as Bishop Estate--to five trustees in order to create and maintain an institution that would benefit the children of Hawai‘i: Kamehameha Schools. A century later, Bishop Estate controlled nearly one out of every nine acres in the state, a concentration of private land ownership rarely seen anywhere in the world. Then in August 1997 the unthinkable happened: Four revered kupuna (native Hawaiian elders) and a professor of trust law publicly charged Bishop Estate trustees with gross incompetence and massive trust abuse. Entitled "Broken Trust," the statement provided devastating details of rigged appointments, violated trusts, cynical manipulation of the trust's beneficiaries, and the shameful involvement of many of Hawai‘i's powerful. 
  No one is better qualified to examine the events and personalities surrounding the scandal than two of the original "Broken Trust" authors. Their comprehensive account together with historical background, brings to light information that has never before been made public, including accounts of secret meetings and communications involving Supreme Court justices.

  Voir livre

• 

  Wired Wisdom - How to Age Better...

  Eszter Hargittai, John Palfrey

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A surprising window into the online lives of people sixty and over—offering essential insights, no matter your age. 
   
  Many popular accounts say the older you are, the greater your tech struggles. And it’s worrying to think of loved ones emailing cringe-worthy misinformation, falling for phishing attacks, or becoming lonelier with increasing time spent online.  
   
  But in their eye-opening book on the internet’s fastest-growing demographic, researchers Eszter Hargittai and John Palfrey offer a more nuanced picture—debunking common myths about older adults’ internet use to offer hope and a necessary call to action. Incorporating original interviews and survey results from thousands of people sixty and over, Wired Wisdom shows that many, in fact, use technology in ways that put younger peers to shame. Over-sixties are often nimble online and quicker to abandon social media platforms that don’t meet their needs. Despite being targeted more often, they also may be less likely to fall for scams than younger peers. And fake news actually fools fewer people over sixty, who have far more experience evaluating sources and detecting propaganda. Still, there are unseen risks and missed opportunities for this group. Hargittai and Palfrey offer practical advice and show that our stereotypes can be hurdles that keep us from building intergenerational support communities, helping loved ones adopt new technology that may improve their lives, and thriving together online.

  Voir livre