![]() The book is illustrated using stick figures and includes a large number of nerdy jokes. The book challenges its readers to figure out what the technical name is of the subjects it describes, and was described by Jack Schofield of ZDNet as a "puzzle game." Besides technology, Munroe also explains human organs and conceptual subjects such as the periodic table. The book covers a wide range of topics, including pencils ("writing sticks"), cameras ("picture takers"), microwave ovens ("food-heating radio boxes"), airplane engines ("sky boat pushers"), and atom bombs ("machines for burning cities"). In Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe explains the function and mechanics of 54 subjects using only the 1,000 most commonly used words in the English language. ![]() ![]() Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, material from Thing Explainer has been incorporated in United States high school textbooks. Munroe conceptualized the book in 2012, when drawing a schematic of the Saturn V rocket for his webcomic xkcd. ![]() Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words is a 2015 illustrated non-fiction book created by Randall Munroe, in which the author attempts to explain various complex subjects using only the 1,000 most common English words. ![]()
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![]() If she touches his head he will go insane but if she touches his chest he will die instantly. Described as looking like a gaunt and pale young maiden, she darts from tree to tree and waylays any young man she happens upon. In Somerset, England there was a malignant nature spirit who lived on the moors within the birch trees by the name of the One with the White Hand. They were said to gather there and linger about until a great compulsion overtook them to walk out into the ocean and to the underwater lands of Aynia. ![]() One of her sacred places was a large stone located near Dunany called Aynia’s Chair… the stone was believed to attract rabid dogs and people with mental illness. In Irish folklore Aynia was one of the Sidhe and the Fairy Queen of Ulster and Tyrone in Northern Ireland. In German lore they were associated with elves. In British lore the white ladies were believed to be fairies and sometimes associated with fertility. Named for their appearance, dressed in long, flowing, silky gowns, they are similar to the Banshee, as they appear near the time of a family member’s death. ![]() The white ladies are both a type of ghost and a fairy being, as there is a nearly indiscernible separation between fairies and the deceased. Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore and Mythology by Theresa Bane ![]() ![]() ![]() On the downside, she was by all accounts a lousy cook, though one imagines Cukor would have been able to find comic relief in that shortcoming. ![]() By her own estimate she traveled to more than 50 countries and owned houses in at least six of them. Her seemingly infinite list of famous friends included Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein, H.G. James Gavin and billionaire Laurance Rockefeller. Blond and beautiful, she married Ernest Hemingway and counted among her lovers legendary World War II Gen. Louis family in 1908 and educated at Bryn Mawr (where she was two years behind Katharine Hepburn), Gellhorn went on to become one of her generation's most respected foreign correspondents, sending back dispassionate, shrewd dispatches from the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Vietnamese conflict. If Martha Gellhorn had not existed, George Cukor would have probably invented her. ![]() ![]() ![]() Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. ![]() Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. ![]() Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. ![]() The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's lucrative career in child trafficking. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents-hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died. The compelling, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal-some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate's bestselling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis. ![]() ![]() And it says all the ands we were originally hoping to capture!"Īdam Silvera: When you saw the final cover, did you-like Ken-think it screamed Mosquitoland ? David Arnold: Absolutely! I'd always envisioned an illustrated cover for Mim. And when our wonderful design team finished putting together this magnificent cover, all thoughts of mosquitos and grizzlies were gone. When I saw the artist’s portfolio, I knew he could capture the feeling of the book. There were other covers in between-everything from Mim’s therapist’s taxidermied grizzly bear to bright, psychedelic designs-but we finally landed on showing the road trip narrative in an illustrated style that will appeal to teen readers as well as adults. But none of them helped tell Mim’s story, so eventually we heavy-heartedly changed directions. We had one big mosquito, multiple small mosquitos, even a squashed mosquito. I originally really wanted a mosquito on the cover. ![]() ![]() So that posed a challenge in terms of cover design. It’s also both hilarious and heartbreaking, and will certainly appeal to teens and adults. "When I first read Mosquitoland on submission, I knew it was that rare novel that straddles the very, very thin line between literary and commercial. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The incidents of his life are all interwoven with politics and the tremendous changes brought about by the French Revolution and the First Empire. Soldier, diplomat, statesman, one of the foremost authors of nineteenth-century French literature, initiator of the nineteenth-century genre of travel literature to the Middle East, memorializer and translator of Milton's Paradise Lost, François-René Chateaubriand was intimately associated with an age of great upheaval and transformation and may be considered as representative of the currents of thoughts and sentiments of his time. CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS-RENÉ (1768–1848), French statesman and writer ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The René Girard Lectures honor the literary critic, anthropologist, religious thinker and Stanford Professor Emeritus René Girard by bringing bold minds to speak in Paris and Stanford, Girard's two intellectual homes. population has a fear of the number 13, and each year the even more specific fear of Friday the 13th. An advance review from Publishers Weekly predicts "readers will return again and again for wisdom and insight." Researchers estimate that as many as 10 percent of the U.S. His newest work is a meditation on the Vedas entitled Ardor and will be published in English translation by Farrar, Straus and Giroux later this November. Hindu mythology that anyone has ever written" (Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India). Wendy Doniger, Calasso also wrote "the very best book about Lifetime" (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony). Joseph Brodsky praised Calasso's retelling of the Greek myths as "the kind of book that comes out only once or twice in one's Philosophy and culture, ancient and modern, east and west. Why? And are we really less superstitious than our ancestors? Roberto Calasso will begin his provocative lecture with these questions.Ĭalled "a literary institution" by The Paris Review, Calasso is theĪuthor of a series of unique works that dazzlingly combine Only modern society is secular: it doesn't believe in anything but itself. Every society in historyĭefined itself in relation to an invisible world. ![]() ![]() ![]() This new book, In Search of the Donnellys, Second Revised Edition, continues to explore the roots of the feud and recounts the author’s personal adventures in the fifty years he spent searching for such information throughout North America and in Ireland. Its own members called it the Peace Society. Patrick’s parish was implicated in the massacre to the extent that, when circumstances drove him to oppose the Donnellys shortly after his arrival in the community, he founded a so-called Property Protective Association that quickly evolved into the Vigilance Committee. Two other sons had died not long before, one in seemingly mysterious circumstances that are still argued about to this day, and another in a barroom squabble. They died at the hands of their fellow church members in their log house on a road known as the Roman Line near the village of Lucan in the County of Middlesex about fifteen miles north of London, Ontario. ![]() Why did a vigilance committee of close neighbors massacre several members of the Donnelly family in the early morning hours of February 4th, 1880? The victims included James Donnelly, his wife Johannah, their two sons and a niece of the old man. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I really liked the characters, they were very human. 'I pulled an all-nighter to read it and my eyes were starting to protest by the end. A tense and involving adventure with shocks and sudden plot twists that will keep teen and adult readers gripped. ![]() This improvised family will have to use every ounce of courage they have just to find food, shelter, while fighting off the 'Changed' and those desperate to stay alive. Desperate to find out what happened and to avoid the zombies that are on the hunt, Alex meets up with Tom - an Army veteran who escaped one war only to find something worse at home - and Ellie, a young girl whose grandfather was killed by the electromagnetic pulse. Everyone still alive has turned - some for the better (those who acquired a superhuman sense) while others for the worse (those who acquired a taste for human flesh). For those spared, it's a question of who can be trusted and who has changed. An electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky zapping every electronic device and killing the vast majority of adults. and who can they trust? Alex has run away and is hiking through the wilderness with her dead parents' ashes, about to say goodbye to the life she no longer wants to live. ![]() ![]() I also really like writing about regional places. ![]() They are made up stories that help you feel good. ![]() And these days, it feels like more than ever. But I also believe that we really just need an escape sometimes from reality. I know that there is a really important place for books about heavy and important topics. Some are for children, some are for adults, and I like to call them feel good fiction. So can you give us a rundown on some of your books? Because you have, like you said from 2013, you have quite a few? So always, but more recently, you know, the books and the blog. And writing weekly on my blog for the last four years. But I have been self publishing books since 2013. Like the idea of like fresh notebooks, and brand new pens and planners like that always excited me. I was one of those people who like thought holiday, who thought like school shopping, you know, back to school shopping to be a national holiday. And I, you know, people say like how long have you been writing. I was born and raised in Alaska, Wisconsin. You can find more conversations, food reviews, live music and events on our website,. ![]() We find out what’s next with this prolific author and where people can find out more. We talk about origins and writing, delve deep into the world of WordNerdopolis. The fourth book in her Cozy Reading Champion Chocolatier series. We talked with author Amanda Zieba about her book Destiny by Design. ![]() |