n 1998, Don Nichols returned regularly to Iowa from his life and job in Washington, D.C., to be with his dying father and to oversee his parentsOCO investments. A veteran investor and investment author, Nichols found that managing the portfolio entrusted to him brought a larger understanding of mortality, family, love, work, and the choices he had made as OC an agri-kid who took the road out of town and kept going.OCO In this insightful and money-wise book that grew out of that experience, he merges the emotions of a dutiful son with the actions of a knowledgeable investor."
n 1998, Don Nichols returned regularly to Iowa from his life and job in Washington, D.C., to be with his dying father and to oversee his parentsOCO in...
As the good little girl in an unhappy family who hid her darker troubles, Deb Abramson felt like she was living with another girl, a shadowy being who would neither leave nor make herself known. Crushed beneath the burden of her parents rigid expectations yet driven to satisfy their needs, Abramson becomes bulimic, then severely depressed and suicidal, retreating more and more from the troubling outside world to the seeming haven of home, to a cycle of comfort from and competition with her depressed mother, to the frightening but alluring intimacy of her father's affections. Her struggle to...
As the good little girl in an unhappy family who hid her darker troubles, Deb Abramson felt like she was living with another girl, a shadowy being who...
In The Body of Brooklyn David Lazar, an acclaimed essayist and prose stylist, offers a vividly detailed, hilarious, and touching recollection of his Brooklyn upbringing in the 1960s and 70s. His immigrant Jewish heritage and his bodily history--from the travails of childhood obesity to the sexual triumphs of post-adolescent leanness--form the core of this series of essays, all of which will win the interest and admiration of readers. More-over, this film-flavored confection is so infused with Lazar's fascinating turn of mind and memory, forever digressing and reflecting upon his digressions,...
In The Body of Brooklyn David Lazar, an acclaimed essayist and prose stylist, offers a vividly detailed, hilarious, and touching recollection of his B...
Charles Lamb, one of the most engaging personal essayists of all time, began publishing his unforgettable, entertaining Elia essays in the "London Magazine" in 1820; they were so immediately popular that a book-length collection was published in 1823. Inventing the persona of Elia allowed Lamb to be shockingly honest and to gain a playful distance for self-examination. The resulting essays touch upon a wide range of compelling subjects from the deliciously humorous Dissertation upon Roast Pig to the poignantly reflective New Year's Eve. Yet collectively they also comprise a fascinating...
Charles Lamb, one of the most engaging personal essayists of all time, began publishing his unforgettable, entertaining Elia essays in the "London ...
Fauna and Flora, Earth and Sky] is, in fact, the most intelligent, thoughtful, original, challenging, and highly entertaining work of nature writing since Barry Lopez's Artic Dreams. . . . It is her broad scope of contemplation, combined with her fiercely beautiful and detailed renderings of passion, natural and human, that give Trudy Dittmar's first but fully mature book its remarkable originality and considerable power. --Robert Finch, Los Angeles Times Book ReviewHonest self-scrutiny is irresistible, especially when told with a knack for diction of place, as this author demonstrates on...
Fauna and Flora, Earth and Sky] is, in fact, the most intelligent, thoughtful, original, challenging, and highly entertaining work of nature writing ...
When he discovers that his father worked on missiles for a defense contractor, Jeff Porter is inspired to revisit America's atomic past and our fallen heroes, in particular J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. The result, "Oppenheimer Is Watching Me", takes readers back to the cold war, when men in lab coats toyed with the properties of matter and fears of national security troubled our sleep. With an eye for strange symmetries, Porter traces how one panicky moment shaped the lives of a generation.
When he discovers that his father worked on missiles for a defense contractor, Jeff Porter is inspired to revisit America's atomic past and our fallen...
Originally published in 1956, "The Great Chain of Life" brings a humanist s keen eye and ear to one of the great questions of the ages: What am I? Originally a scholar of literature and theater, toward the end of his career Joseph Wood Krutch turned to the study of the natural world. Bringing his keen intellect to bear on the places around him, Krutch crafted some of the most memorable and important works of nature writing extant. Whether anticipating the arguments of biologists who now ascribe high levels of cognition to the so-called lower animals, recognizing the importance of nature...
Originally published in 1956, "The Great Chain of Life" brings a humanist s keen eye and ear to one of the great questions of the ages: What am I? Ori...
Whether the subject is the plants that grow there, the animals that live there, the rivers that run there, or the people he has known there, Paul Lindholdt s "In Earshot of Water" illuminates the Pacific Northwest in vivid detail. Lindholdt writes with the precision of a naturalist, the critical eye of an ecologist, the affection of an apologist, and the self-revelation and self-awareness of a personal essayist in the manner of Annie Dillard, Loren Eiseley, Derrick Jensen, John McPhee, Robert Michael Pyle, and Kathleen Dean Moore. Exploring both the literal and literary sense of place,...
Whether the subject is the plants that grow there, the animals that live there, the rivers that run there, or the people he has known there, Paul L...
Peter Selgin was cursed/blessed with an unusual childhood. The son of Italian immigrants his father an electronics inventor and a mother so good looking UPS drivers swerved off their routes to see her Selgin spent his formative years scrambling among the hat factory ruins of a small Connecticut town, visiting doting and dotty relatives in the old world, watching mental giants clash at Mensa gatherings, enduring Pavlovian training sessions with a grandmother bent on curing his left-handedness, and competing savagely with his right-handed twin.It s no surprise, then, that Selgin went on from...
Peter Selgin was cursed/blessed with an unusual childhood. The son of Italian immigrants his father an electronics inventor and a mother so good lo...
Throughout his life, maps have been a source of imagination and wonder for Christopher Norment. Mesmerized by them since the age of eight or nine, he found himself courted and seduced by maps, which served functional and allegorical roles in showing him worlds that he might come to know and helping him understand worlds that he had already explored.
Maps may have been the stuff of his dreams, but they sometimes drew him away from places where he should have remained firmly rooted. "In the Memory of the Map" explores the complex relationship among maps, memory, and experience what might...
Throughout his life, maps have been a source of imagination and wonder for Christopher Norment. Mesmerized by them since the age of eight or nine, ...