Category Archives: Books

Books

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Happily: A Personal History-With Fairy Tales – Sabrina Orah Mark

The literary tradition of the fairy tale has long endured as the vehicle by which we interrogate the laws of reality. These fantastical stories, populated with wolves, kings, and wicked witches, have throughout history served as a template for understanding culture, society, and that muddy terrain we call our collective human psyche. In Happily, Sabrina Orah Mark reimagines the modern fairy tale, turning it inside out and searching it for the wisdom to better understand our contemporary moment in what Mark so incisively calls “this strange American weather.”

Set against the backdrop of political upheaval, viral plague, social protest, and climate change, Mark locates the magic in the mundane and illuminates the surreality of life as we know it today. She grapples with a loss of innocence in “Sorry, Peter Pan, We’re Over You,” when her son decides he would rather dress up as Martin Luther King, Jr., than Peter Pan for Halloween. In “The Evil Stepmother,” Mark finds unlikely communion with wicked wives and examines the roots of their bad reputation. And in “Rapunzel, Draft One Thousand,” the hunt for a wigmaker in a time of unprecedented civil unrest forces Mark to finally confront her sister’s cancer diagnosis and the stories we tell ourselves to get by.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

You Are a Global Citizen: A Guided Journal for the Culturally Curious – Damon Dominique

So you’re here. The world dealt you a random card, and you’re dealing with it.

Maybe right now is the first time you’re even realizing you got dealt a card. You did! You Are A Global Citizen ignites your inner curiosity and provokes self-discovery through thought-provoking questions about the cultures you have experienced–including your own–all while helping you become a more inquisitive, aware, observant, and engaged world citizen.

Whether you’ve never left home, are studying at university, are looking to live and move abroad, or are simply curious about your own identity within a global society, this book will help you understand how the outside world impacts what’s going on inside your mind, and vice versa.

In three sections covering your origins, your external environment and your internal environment, with space for reflection at the beginning and end, Damon Dominique, pioneer of the modern day social media travel scene and star of countless popular You Tube travel vlogs and documentaries, shares his insights and stories from a decade of globetrotting.

He guides you through questions such as, ‘Would you be happy if you knew you had to live in your hometown for the rest of your life?’, ‘What culture or country do you remember romanticizing about as a kid?’, and ‘How do you feel about a global language?’, with the ultimate goal of encouraging you to consider the fundamental questions about who you are, what culture is and what it means to live in a global society, beyond the borders of our minds and countries.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India – Neeti Nair

Changing Homelands offers a startling new perspective on what was and was not politically possible in late colonial India. In this highly readable account of the partition in the Punjab, Neeti Nair rejects the idea that essential differences between the Hindu and Muslim communities made political settlement impossible. Far from being an inevitable solution, the idea of partition was a very late, stunning surprise to the majority of Hindus in the region.

In tracing the political and social history of the Punjab from the early years of the twentieth century, Nair overturns the entrenched view that Muslims were responsible for the partition of India. Some powerful Punjabi Hindus also preferred partition and contributed to its adoption. Almost no one, however, foresaw the deaths and devastation that would follow in its wake.

Though much has been written on the politics of the Muslim and Sikh communities in the Punjab, Nair is the first historian to focus on the Hindu minority, both before and long after the divide of 1947. She engages with politics in post-Partition India by drawing from oral histories that reveal the complex relationship between memory and history–a relationship that continues to inform politics between India and Pakistan.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me – Patrick Bringley

Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.

To his surprise and the reader’s delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns.

In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.

In My Hands Today…

Posted on by
Reply

Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West – Blaine Harden

North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did.

In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin’s life unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence-he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden’s harrowing narrative of Shin’s life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival.