Archives de catégorie : Nonfiction

SCHATTENZEIT d’Oliver Hilmes

The brilliant new panorama of a historical year, by bestselling author Oliver Hilmes.

SCHATTENZEIT:
Deutschland 1943: Alltag und Abgründe
(Days of Darkness: Germany, 1943)
by Oliver Hilmes
Siedler/PRH Germany, January 2023

The catastrophe happens over coffee and cake: on a visit to his mother’s childhood friend in March 1943, Karlrobert Kreiten, a consummate 26-year-old pianist with a promising future ahead of him, claims that Germany has lost the war, and the Führer his mind. Six months after making these unguarded comments, he dies on the gallows.
Kreiten’s tragic fate is at the centre of 
« Days of Darkness », Oliver Hilmes’s superb account of life in Germany in 1943. That year, an entire army is wiped out at Stalingrad, and Goebbels calls for a ‘total war’; children are moved to the countryside for their safety, while millions of Germans crowd into cinemas to see the movie star Hans Albers as Baron Munchausen; the cities are already lying in ruins, yet people keep dancing; and while the Nazis’ ‘machinery of destruction’ is firing on all cylinders, some fantasise about the ‘final victory’ even as others try to stand up to the dictatorship.
In this brilliantly devised and meticulously researched kaleidoscope of stories and character portraits, Hilmes brings the dramatic events of 1943 back to life.

Oliver Hilmes, born in 1971, has a PhD in modern history and is curator at the Berlin Philharmonic foundation. He is the author of bestselling biographies of Alma Mahler-Werfel, Cosima Wagner, Franz Liszt and Ludwig II. His award-winning bestseller Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August was translated into numerous languages.

WILDNIS de Jan Haft

The award-winning creator of nature documentaries writes about the places that nature lovers yearn for – and introduces us to a key concept in nature conservation.

WILDNIS
by Jan Haft
Penguin Germany, March 2023

When we think of wilderness, we think of places like forests filled with an abundance of wild plants – landscapes that show no trace of human civilisation. After all, man and primordial nature are mutually exclusive. In fact, though, wilderness always implies a certain tug of war between different forces: wherever we disturb the balance, nature cannot take its course, and what remains isn’t wilderness, but an impoverished landscape – even if we leave nature to its own devices. Even now, the forests we once exploited contain just a fraction of the animals, plants and fungi that once existed there. Why is that? Biologist and filmmaker Haft examines flawed ideas, proposes a new way of conceiving of wilderness, and explains how – if we wanted to – we could easily and cheaply create new animal-friendly, sustainable and diverse landscapes.

Biologist Jan Haft, born in 1967, is a nature and animal filmmaker with a host of awards to his name. He lives with his wife and three children on a farm near Munich. His first book, The Meadow, appeared in 2019 alongside his feature film The Meadow – A Paradise Next Door; both were a great success.

NOMADEN DER OZEANE de Frauke Bagusche

A fascinating look at the astonishingly talented sea turtles, and why they urgently need our help.

NOMADEN DER OZEANE: DAS GEHEIMNIS DER MEERESSCHILDKRÖTEN
(Nomads of the Sea: The Secret Life of Turtles)
by Frauke Bagusche
Ludwig/PRH Germany, March 2023

Turtles can do amazing things: some can dive to more than 1,000 metres, others transport organisms across the seas (and thus contribute to their distribution), others act as « architects of the oceans » by helping to spread coral reefs along the sea bed. All have impressive « super-senses », which mean they’re able to return to the beaches where they were born – often decades later, and from thousands of kilometres away. They orient themselves by the earth’s magnetic field, as well as their sense of smell, which allows them to recognise the scent of their first beach.
In NOMADS OF THE SEA, marine biologist Bagusche takes us on a singular voyage around the world and a journey back in time. Her fascinating stories about the turtles’ unexpected talents are interwoven with the latest scientific findings as well as her own personal experiences; and she shows why these popular shell-carriers urgently need our help, and what we can do to preserve these animals as well as our common home – the sea.

Frauke Bagusche, born in 1978, is a marine biologist. After gaining her doctorate at the University of Southampton in England she was responsible for marine biological stations on the Maldives and sailed 9,500 kilometres across the Atlantic from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean in order to draw attention to the litter pollution of the oceans. She gives lectures and holds seminars on subjects connected with marine biology. Her previous book The Blue Wonder was translated into several languages.

WHAT’S WRONG? d’Erin Williams

A gorgeously illustrated critique of how the American healthcare system fails women, people of color, and nonbinary individuals—perfect for fans of Invisible Women.

WHAT’S WRONG?
by Erin Williams
Abrams ComicArts, January 2024

WHAT’S WRONG? is author, illustrator, and scientific researcher Erin Williams’s graphic exploration of how the American healthcare system has failed both her and the rest of us. Focusing on poignant, raw, and complex firsthand accounts from four patients, plus Williams’ own personal story, this book addresses identifiable illnesses such as bladder cancer, alcoholism, postpartum depression, abuse, and endometriosis. More broadly, it peels back the layers on the invisible illnesses that come from trauma, often perpetuated by the broken healthcare system.
Western medicine, which is intended to cure illness and pain, often causes more loss, abuse, and suffering, especially for those Americans who do not fit within the narrow definition of “normal,” meaning white, male, and heterosexual. The book explores the many ways in which those receiving medical treatments are often overlooked, unseen, and doubted by their doctors due to their race, gender, and unconventional social circumstances. Despite this, WHAT’S WRONG? remains a beautiful celebration of and declaration by those who were able to find various ways of healing and receiving care, ways where they were not just viewed as collections of parts to be taken apart and reassembled but as people.

Erin Williams is a writer, illustrator, and researcher living in New York. She is the author of Commute and co–author of The Big Fat Activity Book for Pregnant People and The Big Activity Book for Anxious People.

THREE ROCKS: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller de Bill Griffith

From Bill Griffith, the acclaimed creator of Zippy the Pinhead, comes a history of comics as told through the life story of Ernie Bushmiller and his iconic comic strip Nancy.

THREE ROCKS:
The Story of Ernie Bushmiller – The Man Who Created Nancy
by Bill Griffith
Abrams ComicArts, August 2023

From Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead and Nobody’s Fool, comes THREE ROCKS, a biography of cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller, creator of the iconic comic strip Nancy. But this graphic novel is about more than a single comic book artist. It is the story of this American art form, tracing its inception in 1895 with the Yellow Kid, the creation of Nancy in 1933, and all the strips that followed, including Peanuts and The Far Side. When Bushmiller died in 1982, Nancy was running in almost 900 daily newspapers—a number few syndicated cartoonists ever achieve.
Nancy is hailed as the “perfect” comic strip by fans and cartoonists alike. The title Three Rocks refers to the trope of three hemispherical rocks often seen in a Bushmiller landscape—just enough to communicate environment to the reader. This distillation is exemplary of the iconic, diagrammatic look of Nancy, a comic strip about the nature of what it means to be a comic strip—the perfect avatar for Griffith to expand upon his philosophy of creating comics.

As the widest-ranging cartoon chronicler of American absurdity in our time, Bill Griffith has topped himself. This is an instant comic-strip classic!” —Matt Groening

For many years, I’ve devoured Bill Griffith’s work. It’s always inspiring and engrossing. As it never fails to do, Griffith’s brilliance and consummate drawing chops shine through. Three Rocks is amazing!” —Emil Ferris

A page-turning, standard-setting, must-have work of biographical art.” —Chris Ware

Bill Griffith is the creator of the syndicated daily comic strip Zippy and the author of Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead. Griffith’s prolific output has been included in such publications as the Village VoiceNational Lampoon, and The New Yorker. According to Bartlett, Griffith coined the popular phrase, “Are we having fun yet?” He lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut.