Ten Thousand Aftershocks

Ten Thousand Aftershocks PDF Author: Michelle Tom
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 146071346X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
A powerful, poetic and moving memoir of family, violence and estrangement, from a stunning new literary voice. After Michelle Tom's house was damaged by a deadly magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011, she and her young family suffered through another 10,000 aftershocks before finally relocating to the stability of Melbourne, Australia. But soon after arriving, Michelle received the news that her estranged sister was dying. Determined to reconnect before her sister died, Michelle flew home to visit, and memories of childhood flooded back. Told through the five stages of an earthquake via remembered fragments, Michelle Tom explores the similarities between seismic upheaval and her own family's tragedies: her sister's terminal illness, her brother's struggle with schizophrenia and ultimate suicide, the sudden death of her father, her own panic disorder and, through it all, one overarching battle – her lifelong struggle to form a healthy connection with her mother. A powerful, poetic and moving memoir of family, violence and estrangement, Ten Thousand Aftershocks weaves together a series of ever-widening and far-reaching emotional and seismic aftershocks, in a beautifully written and compelling account of a dark family drama. For readers of The Erratics and One Hundred Years of Dirt. 'Emotionally visceral ... both destabilising and alluring ... Tom's use of language is so deft.' The Sunday Age 'A compelling narrative' The Saturday Paper 'An intricately structured memoir weaving the Christchurch earthquakes with the lifelong effects of family trauma and mental illness, Ten Thousand Aftershocks is brave, eloquent and suspenseful.' Louisa Deasey, A Letter from Paris

Ten Thousand Aftershocks

Ten Thousand Aftershocks PDF Author: Michelle Tom
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 146071346X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
A powerful, poetic and moving memoir of family, violence and estrangement, from a stunning new literary voice. After Michelle Tom's house was damaged by a deadly magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011, she and her young family suffered through another 10,000 aftershocks before finally relocating to the stability of Melbourne, Australia. But soon after arriving, Michelle received the news that her estranged sister was dying. Determined to reconnect before her sister died, Michelle flew home to visit, and memories of childhood flooded back. Told through the five stages of an earthquake via remembered fragments, Michelle Tom explores the similarities between seismic upheaval and her own family's tragedies: her sister's terminal illness, her brother's struggle with schizophrenia and ultimate suicide, the sudden death of her father, her own panic disorder and, through it all, one overarching battle – her lifelong struggle to form a healthy connection with her mother. A powerful, poetic and moving memoir of family, violence and estrangement, Ten Thousand Aftershocks weaves together a series of ever-widening and far-reaching emotional and seismic aftershocks, in a beautifully written and compelling account of a dark family drama. For readers of The Erratics and One Hundred Years of Dirt. 'Emotionally visceral ... both destabilising and alluring ... Tom's use of language is so deft.' The Sunday Age 'A compelling narrative' The Saturday Paper 'An intricately structured memoir weaving the Christchurch earthquakes with the lifelong effects of family trauma and mental illness, Ten Thousand Aftershocks is brave, eloquent and suspenseful.' Louisa Deasey, A Letter from Paris

A Paradise Built in Hell

A Paradise Built in Hell PDF Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101459018
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The author of Men Explain Things to Me explores the moments of altruism and generosity that arise in the aftermath of disaster Why is it that in the aftermath of a disaster? whether manmade or natural?people suddenly become altruistic, resourceful, and brave? What makes the newfound communities and purpose many find in the ruins and crises after disaster so joyous? And what does this joy reveal about ordinarily unmet social desires and possibilities? In A Paradise Built in Hell, award-winning author Rebecca Solnit explores these phenomena, looking at major calamities from the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco through the 1917 explosion that tore up Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She examines how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as looking at the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis. This is a timely and important book from an acclaimed author whose work consistently locates unseen patterns and meanings in broad cultural histories.

Aftershock

Aftershock PDF Author: John Feffer
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783609516
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
In this unique, panoramic account of faded dreams, journalist John Feffer returns to Eastern Europe a quarter of a century after the fall of communism, to track down hundreds of people he spoke to in the initial atmosphere of optimism as the Iron Curtain fell – from politicians and scholars to trade unionists and grass roots activists. What he discovers makes for fascinating, if sometimes disturbing, reading. From the Polish scholar who left academia to become head of personnel at Ikea to the Hungarian politician who turned his back on liberal politics to join the far-right Jobbik party, Feffer meets a remarkable cast of characters. He finds that years of free-market reforms have failed to deliver prosperity, corruption and organized crime are rampant, while optimism has given way to bitterness and a newly invigorated nationalism. Even so, through talking to the region’s many extraordinary activists, Feffer shows that against stiff odds hope remains for the region’s future.

A Thousand Moons

A Thousand Moons PDF Author: Sebastian Barry
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735223114
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
“A brave and moving novel [that] has a tender empathy with the natural world.” —Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books From the two-time Booker Prize finalist author of Days Without End comes a dazzling companion novel about memory and identity, set in Tennessee in the aftermath of the Civil War Winona Cole, an orphaned child of the Lakota Indians, finds herself growing up in an unconventional household on a farm in west Tennessee. Raised by her adoptive parents John Cole and Thomas McNulty, whose story Barry told in his acclaimed previous novel Days Without End, she forges a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. Tennessee is a state still riven by the bitter legacy of the Civil War, and the fragile harmony of her family is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand. Exquisitely written, A Thousand Moons is a stirring, poignant story of love and redemption, of one woman's journey and her determination to write her own future.

Give Me Back My Legions!

Give Me Back My Legions! PDF Author: Harry Turtledove
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429967080
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Bestselling author Harry Turtledove turns his attention to an epic battle that pits three Roman legions against Teutonic barbarians in a thrilling novel of Ancient Rome: Give Me Back My Legions! Publius Quinctilius Varus, a Roman politician, is summoned by the Emperor, Augustus Caesar. Given three legions and sent to the Roman frontier east of the Rhine, his mission is to subdue the barbarous German tribes where others have failed, and bring their land fully under Rome's control. Arminius, a prince of the Cherusci, is playing a deadly game. He serves in the Roman army, gaining Roman citizenship and officer's rank, and learning the arts of war and policy as practiced by the Romans. What he learns is essential for the survival of Germany, for he must unite his people against Rome before they become enslaved by the Empire and lose their way of life forever. An epic battle is brewing, and these two men stand on opposite sides of what will forever be known as The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest—a ferocious, bloody clash that will change the course of history.

Robert Ludlum's The Patriot Attack

Robert Ludlum's The Patriot Attack PDF Author: Robert Ludlum
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1409149382
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Japan and China are thrown close to the brink of war when a Japanese warship is attacked. Meanwhile top Covert-One operative Jon Smith is sent to recover mysterious material from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear reactor. Smith vanishes, and CIA agent Randi Russell goes on an unsanctioned mission to find him. She discovers that the missing samples may be evidence that Japan, led by Chief of Staff Masao Takahashi, has been developing next-generation weapons systems in preparation for a conflict with China. The Covert-One team must prevent Takahashi from sparking a war, or the world will be dragged into a battle certain to kill tens of millions of people and leave much of the planet uninhabitable.

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense PDF Author: Lawrence G. McDonald
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307588351
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now: What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers—right from the belly of the beast. In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDonald, a Wall Street insider, reveals, the culture and unspoken rules of the game like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human story of Larry McDonald’s Horatio Alger-like rise from a Massachusetts “gateway to nowhere” housing project to the New York headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the world’s toughest trading floors. We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse, especially those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless, pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the nation’ s oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter here is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed, capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally destroys it. The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains to be measured. But this much is certain: it was a devastating blow to America’s—and the world’s—financial system. And it need not have happened. This is the story of why it did.

The Big Ones

The Big Ones PDF Author: Dr. Lucy Jones
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525434283
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
By the world-renowned seismologist, a riveting history of natural disasters, their impact on our culture, and new ways of thinking about the ones to come Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes--they stem from the same forces that give our planet life. Earthquakes give us natural springs; volcanoes produce fertile soil. It is only when these forces exceed our ability to withstand them that they become disasters. Together they have shaped our cities and their architecture; elevated leaders and toppled governments; influenced the way we think, feel, fight, unite, and pray. The history of natural disasters is a history of ourselves. In The Big Ones, leading seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones offers a bracing look at some of the world's greatest natural disasters, whose reverberations we continue to feel today. At Pompeii, Jones explores how a volcanic eruption in the first century AD challenged prevailing views of religion. She examines the California floods of 1862 and the limits of human memory. And she probes more recent events--such as the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and the American hurricanes of 2017--to illustrate the potential for globalization to humanize and heal. With population in hazardous regions growing and temperatures around the world rising, the impacts of natural disasters are greater than ever before. The Big Ones is more than just a work of history or science; it is a call to action. Natural hazards are inevitable; human catastrophes are not. With this energizing and exhaustively researched book, Dr. Jones offers a look at our past, readying us to face down the Big Ones in our future.

Beyond the Fields

Beyond the Fields PDF Author: Randy Shaw
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520268040
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Much has been written about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers' heyday in the 1960s and '70s, but the story of their profound, ongoing influence on 21st century social justice movements has until now been left untold. This book unearths this legacy.

After the Quake

After the Quake PDF Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307424642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, the mesmerizing stories in After the Quake are as haunting as dreams and as potent as oracles. An electronics salesman who has been deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package— and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who views himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may be his human father. A mild-mannered collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction. The six stories in this collection come from the deep and mysterious place where the human meets the inhuman—and are further proof that Murakami is one of the most visionary writers at work today.