Author: Janet Fitch
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0759568170
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
The unforgettable story of a young woman's odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes on her journey to redemption. Astrid is the only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant, obsessed poet who wields her luminous beauty to intimidate and manipulate men. Astrid worships her mother and cherishes their private world full of ritual and mystery - but their idyll is shattered when Astrid's mother falls apart over a lover. Deranged by rejection, Ingrid murders the man, and is sentenced to life in prison. White Oleander is the unforgettable story of Astrid's journey through a series of foster homes and her efforts to find a place for herself in impossible circumstances. Each home is its own universe, with a new set of laws and lessons to be learned. With determination and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in an indifferent world can become. Oprah Winfrey enjoyed this gripping first novel so much that she not only made it her book club pick, she asked if she could narrate the audio release.
Author: Janet Fitch
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316510068
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 703
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Book Description
A young Russian woman comes into her own in the midst of revolution and civil war in this "brilliant" novel set in "a world of furious beauty" (Los Angeles Review of Books). After the loves and betrayals of The Revolution of Marina M., young poet Marina Makarova finds herself alone amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War -- pregnant and adrift, forced to rely on her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child and eventually make her way back to her native city, Petrograd. After two years of revolution, the city that was once St. Petersburg is almost unrecognizable, the haunted, half-emptied, starving Capital of Once Had Been, its streets teeming with homeless children. Moved by their plight, though hardly better off herself, she takes on the challenge of caring for these orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction. Shaped by her country's ordeals and her own trials -- betrayal and privation and inconceivable loss -- Marina evolves as a poet and a woman of sensibility and substance hardly imaginable at the beginning of her transformative odyssey. Chimes of a Lost Cathedral is the culmination of one woman's s journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century -- the epic story of an artist who discovers her full power, passion, and creativity just as her revolution reveals its true direction for the future.
Author: Albert Hofmann
Publisher: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
ISBN: 9780979862229
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
This is the story of LSD told by a concerned yet hopeful father, organic chemist Albert Hofmann, Ph.D. He traces LSD's path from a promising psychiatric research medicine to a recreational drug sparking hysteria and prohibition. In LSD: My Problem Child, we follow Dr. Hofmann's trek across Mexico to discover sacred plants related to LSD, and listen in as he corresponds with other notable figures about his remarkable discovery. Underlying it all is Dr. Hofmann's powerful conclusion that mystical experiences may be our planet's best hope for survival. Whether induced by LSD, meditation, or arising spontaneously, such experiences help us to comprehend "the wonder, the mystery of the divine, in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula, in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people." More than sixty years after the birth of Albert Hofmann's problem child, his vision of its true potential is more relevant, and more needed, than ever.
Author: Jake Knapp
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501121774
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
From inside Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems, proven at thousands of companies in mobile, e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and more. Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution? Now there’s a surefire way to answer these important questions: the Design Sprint, created at Google by Jake Knapp. This method is like fast-forwarding into the future, so you can see how customers react before you invest all the time and expense of creating your new product, service, or campaign. In a Design Sprint, you take a small team, clear your schedules for a week, and rapidly progress from problem, to prototype, to tested solution using the step-by-step five-day process in this book. A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to nonprofits. It can replace the old office defaults with a smarter, more respectful, and more effective way of solving problems that brings out the best contributions of everyone on the team—and helps you spend your time on work that really matters.
Author: Brad Stone
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316219258
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
The authoritative account of the rise of Amazon and its intensely driven founder, Jeff Bezos, praised by the Seattle Times as "the definitive account of how a tech icon came to life." Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now. Brad Stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, giving readers the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon. Compared to tech's other elite innovators -- Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg -- Bezos is a private man. But he stands out for his restless pursuit of new markets, leading Amazon into risky new ventures like the Kindle and cloud computing, and transforming retail in the same way Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing. The Everything Store is the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.
Author: J. Maarten Troost
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767924932
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
From the bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals, the laugh-out-loud true story of his years on the islands of Vanuatu and Fiji, among cannibals, volcanoes . . . and the world’s best narcotics. With The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Maarten Troost established himself as one of the most engaging and original travel writers around. Getting Stoned with Savages again reveals his wry wit and infectious joy of discovery in a side-splittingly funny account of life in the farthest reaches of the world. After two grueling years on the island of Tarawa, battling feral dogs, machete-wielding neighbors, and a lack of beer on a daily basis, Maarten Troost was in no hurry to return to the South Pacific. But as time went on, he realized he felt remarkably out of place among the trappings of twenty-first-century America. When he found himself holding down a job—one that might possibly lead to a career—he knew it was time for he and his wife, Sylvia, to repack their bags and set off for parts unknown. Getting Stoned with Savages tells the hilarious story of Troost’s time on Vanuatu—a rugged cluster of islands where the natives gorge themselves on kava and are still known to “eat the man.” Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles against typhoons, earthquakes, and giant centipedes and soon finds himself swept up in the laid-back, clothing-optional lifestyle of the islanders. When Sylvia gets pregnant, they decamp for slightly-more-civilized Fiji, a fallen paradise where the local chiefs can be found watching rugby in the house next door. And as they contend with new parenthood in a country rife with prostitutes and government coups, their son begins to take quite naturally to island living—in complete contrast to his dad.
Author: Nalini Dhiman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781080906710
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 110
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Book Description
The Labyrinth of Clouds is a poetry book written by Nalini Dhiman. The name indicates an entanglement of clouds such as a meandering maze where the author needs to find her way out. The choice of words as the title can be linked to the author's fascination with clouds. Her phone's gallery is full of photographs of different formations of clouds that she sees. We all feel lost sometimes and yearn to find our way out of the messy tunnels. Sometimes, we feel lost even the places we love the most. For the author, she uses clouds as an image of how lost she feels even in the world she has created for herself, a world she loves. This book ranges from Odes to imagery poetry, motivating to demotivating poetry. Reading the words is easy but what matters is reading between the lines because every poet hides meaning behind the words. Thus, The Labyrinth of Clouds is a book that shows how confusing everything can be, but in the end, what matters is appreciation of love in life and finding one's purpose.
Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674043268
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1100
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Book Description
Focusing on the arcades of 19th-century Paris--glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centers of consumerism--Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources. 46 illustrations.
Author: Doctor Lorenzo Fioramonti
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1780322704
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
Numbers dominate global politics and, as a result, our everyday lives. Credit ratings steer financial markets and can make or break the future of entire nations. GDP drives our economies. Stock market indices flood our media and national debates. Statistical calculations define how we deal with climate change, poverty and sustainability. But what is behind these numbers? In How Numbers Rule the World, Lorenzo Fioramonti reveals the hidden agendas underpinning the use of statistics and those who control them. Most worryingly, he shows how numbers have been used as a means to reinforce the grip of markets on our social and political life, curtailing public participation and rational debate. An innovative and timely exposé of the politics, power and contestation of numbers.
Author: Dan Simmons
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books
ISBN: 0316132772
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 531
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Book Description
A provocative dystopian thriller set in a future that seems scarily possible, Flashback proves why Dan Simmons is one of our most exciting and versatile writers. The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result. Nick may be a lost soul but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son. This flashback-addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation turning away from the future to live in the past.
