Archives de catégorie : Nonfiction

THE CURE FOR SLEEP de Tanya Shadrick

A memoir about a new mother who begins dying, fast and without warning—and returns from coma determined to stop sleepwalking through life and learn instead what it takes, and costs, to be fully awake: to her body, love and motherhood; to effort, art and nature; to risk and possibility.

THE CURE FOR SLEEP
by Tanya Shadrick
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Spring 2022

“Those breaths after coma were posthumous: the me of my first thirty-three years – that girl, that woman, who had worked so steadily to keep herself hidden, safe and small – was dead. My new self was stripped bare and spreadeagled. Flayed too of con soling ideas about how life might be kept neat and tidy.”

The Cure for Sleep is about the times when lives change shape, turning towards or away from awareness: a terror-stricken child retreats into routine and daydream; a young wife hibernates in marriage; birth and death intertwine; doors open onto strangers who alter life’s course; promises are made and broken; and a woman in midlife finally wakes up to her body, her desires and her voice – enlivening others in turn. For readers of Joan Didion, Annie Ernaux and Elena Ferrante.

Tanya Shadrick is founder of The Selkie Press and editor of Wild Woman Swimming by Lynne Roper – a journal of west country waters longlisted for the 2019 Wainwright Prize. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, she is also a sought-after artist in residence who encourages creativity in others.

THIS IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE de Susan Rogers

A legendary record-producer–turned–brain-scientist explains why you fall in love with music.

THIS IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE:
What the Music You Love Says About You
by Dr. Susan Rogers & Dr. Ogi Ogas
W.W. Norton, September 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

When you listen to music, do you prefer lyrics or melody? Intricate harmonies or driving rhythm? The “real” sounds of acoustic instruments or those of computerized synthesizers? Drawing from her successful career as a music producer (engineering hits like Prince’s “Purple Rain”), professor of cognitive neuroscience Susan Rogers reveals why your favorite songs move you. She explains that we each possess a unique “listener profile” based on our brain’s reaction to seven key dimensions of any record: authenticity, realism, novelty, melody, lyrics, rhythm, and timbre. Exploring this profile will deepen your connection to music, refresh your playlists, and uncover aspects of your personality. Rogers takes us behind the scenes of record-making, using her insider’s ear to illuminate the music of Prince, Frank Sinatra, Lana Del Rey, and many others. Told in a lively, inclusive style, this book will change the way you listen to music.

« A revelation. Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas offer extraordinary insights about music, emotion, and the brain and they deliver them with great flair and flow. For all I thought I knew about these subjects, I learned a lot from this book―and was entertained at every turn, both by the ideas and the poetry of their expression. An instant classic, THIS IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE should be read by anyone who has ever been moved by a piece of music―in other words, everyone. » ― Dr. Daniel J. Levitin, New York Times bestselling author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind

Susan Rogers, PhD, is a cognitive neuroscientist and a professor at Berklee College of Music, as well as a multiplatinum record producer. She resides in Boston, Massachusetts.
Ogi Ogas, PhD, was a Department of Homeland Security Fellow at the Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems at Boston University and a research fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He coauthored Dark Horse, The End of Average, and Shrinks, which was longlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

THE UNMAKING de Stephanie Foo

In this science-based, remarkably candid account of what it’s like to heal from Complex PTSD, journalist Stephanie Foo offers a fascinating exploration of a psychological phenomenon we’re only beginning to understand and a relevant and powerful narrative of reckoning and healing.

THE UNMAKING
by Stephanie Foo
Ballantine, pub. date TBD

Stephanie Foo was an accomplished journalist, a producer at This American Life, won an Emmy, and launched a podcasting app, but behind her office door she was having panic attacks. At the age of 30 she was diagnosed with Complex PTSD. Finding few resources to help her heal, Stephanie set out to write her own guide, THE UNMAKING. With the determination and curiosity of an award-winning journalist, Stephanie investigates the science behind Complex PTSD and how it has shaped her own life. She interviews experts and tries a variety of therapies. She also dives into her past of extreme child abuse and neglect and uncovers family secrets.
While someone can develop PTSD from a single traumatic event, Complex PTSD blooms when the trauma happens over and over and over, over the course of years. Risk factors include being hit or verbally abused by a caretaker, having mentally ill, alcoholic or addict parents, or even facing poverty. Those numbers alone add up to around 50 million people. And that’s not including the large populations of those who may have developed Complex PTSD through domestic abuse, continual health issues, or POC and queer people living in threatening and discriminatory environments. They need help. And yet…nobody is talking about it. THE UNMAKING describes how C-PTSD is, essentially, brain damage, and the tragic impact it has on bodies and minds. But unlike the academic books on C-PTSD, Stephanie Foo also shares how it feels to learn that science as a survivor. She writes about her doubts, anguish, terrible setbacks, and ultimately, successes.

Stephanie Foo is a writer and radio producer. She most recently was a producer at the radio show This American Life, which reaches 5 million listeners every week. Before that, she helped create the public radio show Snap Judgment, where she produced nearly 200 stories in 4 years. Foo is an acclaimed advocate for diversity in all forms. She wrote a viral article for Transom about the importance of diverse workplaces, particularly in newsrooms, and speaks frequently on the topic of diversity and inclusion. She’s an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University and has spoken at Columbia, Vassar, Yale, Berkeley and CUNY.

ASK A PHILOSOPHER de Ian Olasov

For several years Ian Olasov has set up “Ask-a-Philosopher” booths around New York City, answering questions from passers-by. Now in this book he offers answers to the real-life questions on people’s minds.

ASK A PHILOSOPHER:
Answers to Your Most Important—and Most Unexpected—Questions
by Ian Olasov
Thomas Dunne Books, September 2020

Ian Olasov answers questions such as:
– Are people innately good or bad?
– Is it okay to have a pet fish?
– Is it okay to have kids?
– Is color subjective?
– If humans colonize Mars, who will own the land?
– Is there life after death?
– Should I give money to homeless people?

ASK A PHILOSOPHER shows that there’s a way of making philosophy work for each of us, and that philosophy can be both perfectly continuous with everyday life, and also utterly transporting. From questions that we all wrestle with in private to questions that you never thought to ask, ASK A PHILOSOPHER will get you thinking.

Ian Olasov is an adjunct professor and doctoral candidate at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He won the American Philosophical Association’s Public Philosophy Op-Ed Prize in 2016 and 2018. His Ask-a-Philosopher series has received a lot of publicity coverage over the years including in Newsweek, The New York Times, qz.com, and WNYC.

BERLIN RECKONING de Alexander Wolff

From acclaimed journalist and former Sports Illustrated staff writer Alexander Wolff comes the fascinating story—part history, part memoir—of the author’s exiled grandfather and émigré father, who survived the turmoil of both World Wars and led fascinating lives as immigrants in America.

BERLIN RECKONING:
My German American Family’s Story of War, Flight, Exile and Emigration
by Alexander Wolff
Atlantic Monthly, Winter 2021

In 2017 acclaimed journalist Alexander Wolff moved to Berlin to ta explore the lives of his exile grandfather Kurt Wolff and émigré father Niko Wolff—two part-Jewish, German-born men who became American citizens. Kurt Wolff broke into the book business in 1909 as partner of Ernst Rowohlt in Leipzig; four years later, at age 26, he went out on his own, publishing Franz Kafka, Heinrich Mann, Franz Werfel, Joseph Roth, and other writers whose books would be burned by the Nazis. Just after the Reichstag fire in 1933, he and his wife Helen fled to France and Italy, and eight years later in New York they founded Pantheon Books, which went on to publish Gift from the Sea, Doctor Zhivago, and The Tin Drum. Kurt left behind a son from his first marriage, who served in the Wehrmacht before being captured by the Americans, emigrating to the U.S. only in 1948. This was Alexander’s father Niko. Drawing on family letters, diaries, reminiscences and photographs, many never before seen by anyone outside the family, Alexander weaves intimate detail of his father and grandfather into a tapestry of history. An absorbing journey that is part memoir and part historical narrative, BERLIN RECKONING is the saga of a far-flung family navigating wartime and its aftershocks. The book evokes the perils, triumphs, and setbacks at the heart of the refugee experience. And it paints a vivid portrait of the life and times of a titanic literary figure who went from having his books burned by the Nazis to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Alexander Wolff spent 36 years on staff at Sports Illustrated. He is author or editor of nine books, including the New York Times bestseller Raw Recruits and Big Game, Small World, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. A former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, from which he graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in History, he lives with his family in Vermont.