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A newsbreaking memoir that tackles head-on the toughest challenge in the world today. When a dying King Hussein shocked the world by picking his son rather than his brother, the longtime crown prince, to be the next king of Jordan, no one was more surprised than the young head of Special Operations, who discovered his life was in for a major upheaval. This is the inspirational story of a young prince who went to boarding school in America and military academy in Britain and grew up believing he would be a soldier. Back home, he hunted down terrorists and modernized Jordan's Special Forces. Then, suddenly, he found himself king. Together with his wife, Queen Rania, he transformed what it meant to be a monarch, going undercover to escape the bubble of the court while she became the Muslim world's most passionate advocate of women's rights. In this exceptionally candid memoir, King Abdullah tackles the single toughest issue he faces head-on- how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian standoff- and reveals himself to be an invaluable intermediary between America and the Arab world. He writes about the impact of the Iraq war on his neighborhood and how best to tackle Iran's nuclear ambitions. Why would a sitting head of state choose to write about the most explosive issues he faces? King Abdullah does so now because he believes we face a moment of truth: a last chance for peace in the Middle East. The prize is enormous, the cost of failure far greater than we dare imagine.
A Publishers Weekly Best Book Jack Lambeau is the prodigal son returned home to Lakeland, New York; the Ivy-League educated architectural visionary brought home to reinvent the dying port town and smooth over its self imposed scars. His friend, Steven Turner is the Brooklyn-born local reporter who will bear witness to the city's successes and failures. Between them come Jack's beautiful fiancee Anne--an artist with secrets of her own - and his undisciplined brother Harris, hired by Jack to remove the suspicious barrels of waste from Lakeland's broken heart. As the town struggles to find a new identity, these four characters must find their way through their own unexpected transformations and along the way attempt to answer the questions that plague us all: what is the price of loyalty, filialty, goodness and love?
A powerful investigation into the chances for humanity's future from the author of the bestseller The World Without Us. In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet-only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature. But with a million more of us every 4 1/2 days on a planet that's not getting any bigger, and with our exhaust overheating the atmosphere and altering the chemistry of the oceans, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth -- and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth? Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world's cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it's in their own best interest to limit their growth. The result is a landmark work of reporting: devastating, urgent, and, ultimately, deeply hopeful. By vividly detailing the burgeoning effects of our cumulative presence, Countdown reveals what may be the fastest, most acceptable, practical, and affordable way of returning our planet and our presence on it to balance. Weisman again shows that he is one of the most provocative journalists at work today, with a book whose message is so compelling that it will change how we see our lives and our destiny.
One of The New York Times's 100 notable books of 2021 "[George Packer's] account of America’s decline into destructive tribalism is always illuminating and often dazzling." —William Galston, The Washington Post Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America’s descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem. A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. With pitiless precision, the year exposed the nation’s underlying conditions—discredited elites, weakened institutions, blatant inequalities—and how difficult they are to remedy. In Last Best Hope, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. He explores the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression. In lively and biting prose, Packer shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy. To point a more hopeful way forward, he looks for a common American identity and finds it in the passion for equality—the “hidden code”—that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. Today, we are challenged again to fight for equality and renew what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the art” of self-government. In its strong voice and trenchant analysis, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national renewal.
The author chronicles his and his wife's nine desperate weeks adrift in the Pacific on a six-foot raft, twelve hundred miles from land with little food and surrounded by sharks, after their intended circumnavigation of the globe was cut short by a whale attack upon their sloop.
A candid and colorful memoir by the singer, songwriter, and “Duchess of Coolsville” (Time). This troubadour life is only for the fiercest hearts, only for those vessels that can be broken to smithereens and still keep beating out the rhythm for a new song . . . Last Chance Texaco is the first-ever no-holds-barred account of the life of two-time Grammy Award-winner and Rickie Lee Jones in her own words (Hilton Als). It is a tale of desperate chances and impossible triumphs, an adventure story of a girl who beat the odds and grew up to become one of the most legendary artists of her time, turning adversity and hopelessness into timeless music. With candor and lyricism, she takes us on a singular journey through her nomadic childhood, her years as a teenage runaway, her legendary love affair with Tom Waits, and ultimately her longevity as the hardest working woman in rock and roll. Rickie Lee’s stories are rich with the infamous characters of her early songs—“Chuck E’s in Love,” “Weasel and the White Boys Cool,” “Danny’s All-Star Joint,” and “Easy Money”—but long before her notoriety in show business, there was a vaudevillian cast of hitchhikers, bank robbers, jail breaks, drug mules, and a pimp with a heart of gold, and tales of her fabled ancestors. This intimate memoir by one of the most trailblazing and tenacious women in music is filled with never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, whose songs defied categorization and inspired American pop culture for decades. “A striking, distinctive self-portrait.” —The New York Times “Terrific . . . Jones is as fearless in prose as she is on stage.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Men leave, fame fizzles, family breaks your heart . . . but Jones knows a good story and how to tell it.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “[The] premiere song-stylist and songwriter of her generation.” —Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize–winner and author of White Girls
NEWBERY HONOR AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • ASIAN/PACIFIC AMERICAN AWARD FOR YOUTH LITERATURE Twelve year-old Maizy discovers her family’s Chinese restaurant is full of secrets in this irresistible novel that celebrates food, fortune, and family. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY School Library Journal • Booklist • The Horn Book • New York Public Library Welcome to the Golden Palace! Maizy has never been to Last Chance, Minnesota . . . until now. Her mom’s plan is just to stay for a couple weeks, until her grandfather gets better. But plans change, and as Maizy spends more time in Last Chance and at the Golden Palace—the restaurant that’s been in her family for generations—she makes some discoveries.For instance: You can tell a LOT about someone by the way they order food. People can surprise you. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in disappointing ways. And the Golden Palace has secrets... But the more Maizy discovers, the more questions she has. Like, why are her mom and her grandmother always fighting? Who are the people in the photographs on the office wall? And when she discovers that a beloved family treasure has gone missing—and someone has left a racist note—Maizy decides it’s time to find the answers.
From the time he arrived on the political scene in 1964 – throughout his presidency and beyond, Ronald Reagan – used his speeches to inspire and reinvigorate America. When he spoke, Reagan, said, he was “preaching a sermon.” The American people saw his vision of America and his dreams for the future and they overwhelmingly responded; he was re-elected in 984 by the largest number of electoral votes in the nation’s history. Here in this collection of twenty-eight speeches spanning the Reagan era, readers can find inspiration in Reagan’s “sermons.” From his first speech in the political arena in 1964 to his Last Letter to America, informing Americans of his Alzheimer’s disease, Ronald Regan’s words show a profound belief in God, freedom, individualism, limited government, and his great love for his country. In addition to an introduction by Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, each speech features an informative introduction which puts the speech into historical context, making The Last Best Hope the perfect entrée into the influence of one of the major figures of the 20th century.
You’ve Got Mail meets Morgan Matson in this smart, banter-filled romcom with a bookish twist. Nothing will stop Madeline Moore from taking over her family’s independent bookstore after college. Nothing, that is—until a chain bookstore called Prologue opens across the street and threatens to shut them down. Madeline sets out to demolish the competition, but the guy who works over at Prologue seems intent on ruining her life. Not only is he taking her customers, he has the unbelievable audacity to be… extremely cute. But that doesn’t matter. Jasper is the enemy and he will be destroyed. After all—all’s fair in love and (book) war.
The guy looked at me with a stare that would have frozen antifreeze. "You the new groupie, huh?" "Yeah," I said. "So?" "So no one wants you here. Why don't you go back where you came from?" I can't go back, I wanted to say. That was the thing about living in a group home. There was nowhere for me to go but forward. Brent Hartinger's second novel, a portrait of a subculture of teenagers that many people would like to forget, is as powerful and provocative as his first book, Geography Club.