Stories from the Country of Lost Borders

Stories from the Country of Lost Borders PDF Author: Mary Austin
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813512181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain (1903) and Lost Borders (1909), both set in the California desert, make intimate connections between animals, people, and the land they inhabit. For Austin, the two indispensable conditions of her fiction were that the region must enter the story "as another character, as the instigator of plot," and that the story must reflect "the essential qualities of the land." In The Land of Little Rain, Austin's attention to natural detail allows her to write prose that is geologically, biologically, and botanically accurate at the same time that it offers metaphorical insight into human emotional and spiritual experience. In Lost Borders, Austin focuses on both white and Indian women's experiences in the desert, looks for the sources of their deprivation, and finds them in the ways life betrays them, usually in the guise of men. She offers several portraits of strong women characters but ultimately identifies herself with the desert, which she personifies as a woman.

Stories from the Country of Lost Borders

Stories from the Country of Lost Borders PDF Author: Mary Austin
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813512181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain (1903) and Lost Borders (1909), both set in the California desert, make intimate connections between animals, people, and the land they inhabit. For Austin, the two indispensable conditions of her fiction were that the region must enter the story "as another character, as the instigator of plot," and that the story must reflect "the essential qualities of the land." In The Land of Little Rain, Austin's attention to natural detail allows her to write prose that is geologically, biologically, and botanically accurate at the same time that it offers metaphorical insight into human emotional and spiritual experience. In Lost Borders, Austin focuses on both white and Indian women's experiences in the desert, looks for the sources of their deprivation, and finds them in the ways life betrays them, usually in the guise of men. She offers several portraits of strong women characters but ultimately identifies herself with the desert, which she personifies as a woman.

Stories from the Country of Lost Borders

Stories from the Country of Lost Borders PDF Author: Mary Austin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Stories set in the deserts and mountains of California draw on the relationship of people to the land.

The Desert

The Desert PDF Author: Michael Welland
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780233892
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
From endless sand dunes and prickly cacti to shimmering mirages and green oases, deserts evoke contradictory images in us. They are lands of desolation, but also of romance, of blistering Mojave heat and biting Gobi cold. Covering a quarter of the earth’s land mass and providing a home to half a billion people, they are both a physical reality and landscapes of the mind. The idea of the desert has long captured Western imagination, put on display in films and literature, but these portrayals often fail to capture the true scope and diversity of the people living there. Bridging the scientific and cultural gaps between perception and reality, The Desert celebrates our fascination with these arid lands and their inhabitants, as well as their importance both throughout history and in the world today. Covering an immense geographical range, Michael Welland wanders from the Sahara to the Atacama, depicting the often bizarre adaptations of plants and animals to these hostile environments. He also looks at these seemingly infertile landscapes in the context of their place in history—as the birthplaces not only of critical evolutionary adaptations, civilizations, and social progress, but also of ideologies. Telling the stories of the diverse peoples who call the desert home, he describes how people have survived there, their contributions to agricultural development, and their emphasis on water and its scarcity. He also delves into the allure of deserts and how they have been used in literature and film and their influence on fashion, art, and architecture. As Welland reveals, deserts may be difficult to define, but they play an active role in the evolution of our global climate and society at large, and their future is of the utmost importance. Entertaining, informative, and surprising, The Desert is an intriguing new look at these seemingly harsh and inhospitable landscapes.

Lands of Lost Borders

Lands of Lost Borders PDF Author: Kate Harris
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062839314
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
"Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven’t felt for years. It’s a modern classic."—Pico Iyer A brilliant, fierce writer, and winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize, makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road—an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild that dares us to challenge the limits we place on ourselves and the natural world. As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved—to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician—had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth; there was nothing left to be discovered. Looking beyond this planet, she decided to become a scientist and go to Mars. In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle down the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel. Pedaling mile upon mile in some of the remotest places on earth, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. The farther she traveled, the closer she came to a world as wild as she felt within. Lands of Lost Borders, winner of the 2018 Banff Adventure Travel Award and a 2018 Nautilus Award, is the chronicle of Harris’s odyssey and an exploration of the importance of breaking the boundaries we set ourselves; an examination of the stories borders tell, and the restrictions they place on nature and humanity; and a meditation on the existential need to explore—the essential longing to discover what in the universe we are doing here. Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer, Kate Harris offers a travel account at once exuberant and reflective, wry and rapturous. Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of the self that can never fully be mapped. Weaving adventure and philosophy with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other—a belonging that transcends any fences or stories that may divide us.

Lands of Lost Borders

Lands of Lost Borders PDF Author: Kate Harris
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0345816781
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE RBC TAYLOR PRIZE WINNER OF THE EDNA STAEBLER AWARD FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION "Every day on a bike trip is like the one before--but it is also completely different, or perhaps you are different, woken up in new ways by the mile." As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved--that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and philosopher--had gone extinct. From her small-town home in Ontario, it seemed as if Marco Polo, Magellan and their like had long ago mapped the whole earth. So she vowed to become a scientist and go to Mars. To pass the time before she could launch into outer space, Kate set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule, then settled down to study at Oxford and MIT. Eventually the truth dawned on her: an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. And Harris had soared most fully out of bounds right here on Earth, travelling a bygone trading route on her bicycle. So she quit the laboratory and hit the Silk Road again with Mel, this time determined to bike it from the beginning to end. Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer before her, Kate Harris offers a travel narrative at once exuberant and meditative, wry and rapturous. Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of a world that, like the self and like the stars, can never be fully mapped.

Crossing the Borders of Time

Crossing the Borders of Time PDF Author: Leslie Maitland
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590514971
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
On a pier in Marseille in 1942, with desperate refugees pressing to board one of the last ships to escape France before the Nazis choked off its ports, an 18-year-old German Jewish girl was pried from the arms of the Catholic Frenchman she loved and promised to marry. As the Lipari carried Janine and her family to Casablanca on the first leg of a perilous journey to safety in Cuba, she would read through her tears the farewell letter that Roland had slipped in her pocket: “Whatever the length of our separation, our love will survive it, because it depends on us alone. I give you my vow that whatever the time we must wait, you will be my wife. Never forget, never doubt.” Five years later – her fierce desire to reunite with Roland first obstructed by war and then, in secret, by her father and brother – Janine would build a new life in New York with a dynamic American husband. That his obsession with Ayn Rand tormented their marriage was just one of the reasons she never ceased yearning to reclaim her lost love. Investigative reporter Leslie Maitland grew up enthralled by her mother’s accounts of forbidden romance and harrowing flight from the Nazis. Her book is both a journalist’s vivid depiction of a world at war and a daughter’s pursuit of a haunting question: what had become of the handsome Frenchman whose picture her mother continued to treasure almost fifty years after they parted? It is a tale of memory that reporting made real and a story of undying love that crosses the borders of time.

After the Last Border

After the Last Border PDF Author: Jessica Goudeau
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525559140
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
"Simply brilliant, both in its granular storytelling and its enormous compassion" --The New York Times Book Review The story of two refugee families and their hope and resilience as they fight to survive and belong in America The welcoming and acceptance of immigrants and refugees have been central to America's identity for centuries--yet America has periodically turned its back in times of the greatest humanitarian need. After the Last Border is an intimate look at the lives of two women as they struggle for the twenty-first century American dream, having won the "golden ticket" to settle as refugees in Austin, Texas. Mu Naw, a Christian from Myanmar struggling to put down roots with her family, was accepted after decades in a refugee camp at a time when America was at its most open to displaced families; and Hasna, a Muslim from Syria, agrees to relocate as a last resort for the safety of her family--only to be cruelly separated from her children by a sudden ban on refugees from Muslim countries. Writer and activist Jessica Goudeau tracks the human impacts of America's ever-shifting refugee policy as both women narrowly escape from their home countries and begin the arduous but lifesaving process of resettling in Austin--a city that would show them the best and worst of what America has to offer. After the Last Border situates a dramatic, character-driven story within a larger history--the evolution of modern refugee resettlement in the United States, beginning with World War II and ending with current closed-door policies--revealing not just how America's changing attitudes toward refugees have influenced policies and laws, but also the profound effect on human lives.

Nation Shapes

Nation Shapes PDF Author: Fred M. Shelley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1247

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Book Description
This book provides a concise and comprehensive description of all of the borders of every country in the contemporary world, including physical boundaries, their historical evolution, and border-related conflicts with other countries. Nation Shapes: The Story behind the World's Borders examines the importance of country boundaries, the disconnects between these borders, related factors such as cultures, religions, and economies, and how conflicts over boundaries between neighboring countries are articulated. The book is organized geographically and by region of the world: the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, East and Southeast Asia, and Australia and Oceania. It provides comprehensive descriptions of the boundaries of each country in the world, the historical evolution of these boundaries, and current and potential future boundary disputes and conflicts. While the work contains an entry for each country, the emphasis is on countries of major importance in the modern global economy.

Lost Children Archive

Lost Children Archive PDF Author: Valeria Luiselli
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525436464
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “An epic road trip [that also] captures the unruly intimacies of marriage and parenthood ... This is a novel that daylights our common humanity, and challenges us to reconcile our differences.” —The Washington Post One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years In Valeria Luiselli’s fiercely imaginative follow-up to the American Book Award-winning Tell Me How It Ends, an artist couple set out with their two children on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet. Through ephemera such as songs, maps and a Polaroid camera, the children try to make sense of both their family’s crisis and the larger one engulfing the news: the stories of thousands of kids trying to cross the southwestern border into the United States but getting detained—or lost in the desert along the way. A breath-taking feat of literary virtuosity, Lost Children Archive is timely, compassionate, subtly hilarious, and formally inventive—a powerful, urgent story about what it is to be human in an inhuman world.

Crossing Borders

Crossing Borders PDF Author: Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609807928
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
In Joyce Carol Oates’s story “The Translation,” a traveler to an Eastern European country falls in love with a woman he gets to know through an interpreter. In Lydia Davis’s “French Lesson I: Le Meurtre,” what begins as a lesson in beginner’s French takes a sinister turn. In the essay “On Translating and Being Translated,” Primo Levi addresses the joys and difficulties awaiting the translator. Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays About Translation gathers together thirteen stories and five essays that explore the compromises, misunderstandings, traumas, and reconciliations we act out and embody through the art of translation. Guiding her selection is Schwartz’s marvelous eye for finding hidden gems, bringing together Levi, Davis, and Oates with the likes of Michael Scammell, Harry Mathews, Chana Bloch, and so many other fine and intriguing voices.