Category Archives: Books

Books

In My Hands Today…

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100 Disney Adventures of a Lifetime: Magical Experiences From Around the World – Marcy Smothers

Wake up to the sight of giraffes grazing outside of your window. Soar 400 feet into the sky on a hot-air balloon ride over Walt Disney World. Watch the Disneyland fireworks from The Tomorrowland Skyline Lounge, far away from the crowds. Taste your way through 11 countries of the world at Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival. Take a jet trip around the world.

All these experiences and more bring the magic of Disney alive–and you can find 100 not-to-be-missed adventures in this one-of-a-kind collection. From the most beloved signature experiences–Epcot’s International Flower Show, breakfast with beloved characters at Chef Mickey’s, and getting dolled up like a princess before your day at the park–to the hidden VIP wonders like a private dinner in the wine cellar the Grand Floridian or drinks at the exclusive, members-only Club 33, this illuminating guidebookcelebrates and reveals the best experiences in and around Disney resorts and parks all over the globe.

Discover the magic that awaits, including:

  • A training session at the Jedi Academy at Disney Hollywood Studios, where you can make your own light saber and fight Darth Vader
  • Magical meals at a rotating dinner club featuring Walt Disney World’s best chefs, each themed to Disney lore
  • A 5.7 million-gallon salt water aquarium at Epcot Seas, where you can swim with angelfish, dolphins, eagle rays, and sharks
  • A private after-hours tour of the Luxor Temple in Egypt, where Adventures by Disney gets you away from the crowds for an intimate experience
  • Secret off-the-menu items around the park, including a cherry milkshake at Carnation Café and ice cream nachos at the Golden Horseshoe
  • The ultimate viewing spots for nightly fireworks throughout all the Disney Parks
  • Disney’s Halloween party, a one-of-a-kind theme night in the happiest place on Earth
  • A 5K Challenge on Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay, where you can soothe sore muscles post-race with a beachfront massage
  • A private jet tour around the world, led by expert National Geographic explorers
  • And so much more!
  • Along with beautiful imagery that will help shape your bucket list, this fantastic guide includes pilgrimages to historic Disney sites, like Walt’s hometown haunts in Chicago and Tam O’Shanter’s in Los Angeles where there’s a table named in his honor. Plus, National Geographic provides the inside stories of some of Disney’s most beloved attractions.

Each of these 100 adventures–from Walt Disney World in Orlando to the Galapagos Islands to Disneyland Tokyo–will have you believing in magic and wonder all over again.

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What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions – Randall Munroe

The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist.

Before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to a T. rex, or fill every church with bananas, be sure to consult this practical guide for impractical ideas. Unfazed by absurdity, Randall consults the latest research on everything from swing-set physics to airplane-catapult design to clearly and concisely answer his readers’ questions. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances.

Filled with bonkers science, boundless curiosity, and Randall’s signature stick-figure comics, What If? 2 is sure to be another instant classic adored by inquisitive readers of all ages.

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Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders – Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, Ella Morton, translated by Maciej Potulny

Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 600 of the strangest and most curious places in the world.

Here are natural wonders—the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa that’s so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can drink comfortably. Architectural marvels, including the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants. Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan’s 45-year hole of fire called the Door of Hell, coffins hanging off a side of a cliff in the Philippines, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England.

Atlas Obscura revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden, and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book you can open anywhere.

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The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India – Urvashi Butalia

The partition of India into two countries, India and Pakistan, caused one of the most massive human convulsions in history. Within the space of two months in 1947 more than twelve million people were displaced. A million died. More than seventy-five thousand women were abducted and raped. Countless children disappeared. Homes, villages, communities, families, and relationships were destroyed. Yet, more than half a century later, little is known of the human dimensions of this event.

In The Other Side of Silence , Urvashi Butalia fills this gap by placing people—their individual experiences, their private pain—at the center of this epochal event.Through interviews conducted over a ten-year period and an examination of diaries, letters, memoirs, and parliamentary documents, Butalia asks how people on the margins of history—children, women, ordinary people, the lower castes, the untouchables—have been affected by this upheaval.

To understand how and why certain events become shrouded in silence, she traces facets of her own poignant and partition-scarred family history before investigating the stories of other people and their experiences of the effects of this violent disruption. Those whom she interviews reveal that, at least in private, the voices of partition have not been stilled and the bitterness remains.

Throughout, Butalia reflects on difficult questions: what did community, caste, and gender have to do with the violence that accompanied partition? What was partition meant to achieve and what did it actually achieve? How, through unspeakable horrors, did the survivors go on? Believing that only by remembering and telling their stories can those affected begin the process of healing and forgetting, Butalia presents a sensitive and moving account of her quest to hear the painful truth behind the silence.

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The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There – Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey

Receptionist Pam Beesly and accountant Angela Martin had very little in common when they toiled together at Scranton’s Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.

But, in reality, the two bonded in their very first days on set and, over the nine seasons of the series’ run, built a friendship that transcended the show and continues to this day.

Sharing everything from what it was like in the early days as the show struggled to gain traction, to walking their first red carpet—plus exclusive stories on the making of milestone episodes and how their lives changed when they became moms—The Office BFFs is full of the same warm and friendly tone Jenna and Angela have brought to their Office Ladies podcast.