Archives de catégorie : Nonfiction

THE HEARTBEAT OF THE WILD de David Quammen

In this inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed author David Quammen journeys to places where civilization meets raw nature and explores the challenge of balancing the needs of both.

THE HEARTBEAT OF THE WILD:
Dispatches From Landscapes of Wonder, Peril, and Hope
by David Quammen
National Geographic, May 2023
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

For more than two decades, award-winning science and nature writer David Quammen has traveled to Earth’s most far-flung and fragile destinations, sending back field notes from places caught in the tension between humans and the wild. This illuminating book features 20 of those assignments: elegantly written narratives, originally published in National Geographic magazine and updated for today, telling colorful and impassioned stories from some of the planet’s wildest locales.
Quammen shares encounters with African elephants, chimpanzees, and gorillas (and their saviors, including Jane Goodall); the salmon of northeastern Russia and the people whose livelihood depends on them; the lions of Kenya and the villagers whose homes border on parks created to preserve the species; and the champions of rewilding efforts in southernmost South America, designed to rescue iconic species including jaguars and macaws.
With a new introduction, afterword, and notes framing each story, Quammen reminds us of the essential role played by wild nature at the heart of the planet.

Three-time winner of the National Magazine Award (the Ellie) and author of 15 books, David Quammen is one of the world’s top nature and science writers. His 2012 book Spillover, which predicted a worldwide pandemic, was shortlisted for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and has made him one of the most sought-after commentators on the coronavirus. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.

ASTROLOGY OF YOU AND ME ORACLE DECK de Gary Goldschneider

Whether you’re struggling to understand a break-up, looking to forge new alliances at work, or wanting to reconnect with an old friend, let the universe guide you as you explore how the stars impact every aspect of your relationships.

ASTROLOGY OF YOU AND ME ORACLE DECK:
72 Cards to Understand and Improve Your Relationships
by Gary Goldschneider
illustrated by Camille Chew
Clarkson Potter/St. Martin’s Press, February 2024

A companion to the bestselling book The Astrology of You and Me (Quirk Publishing), this oracle deck of 72 illustrated cards describes six archetypes—the romantic partner, the ex, the friend, the parent, the coworker, the competitor—within each of the twelve Zodiac signs. With multiple ways to read the cards, this deck offers more than just one method of insight.
The companion guidebook offers ways to use the deck as an oracle, including providing instructions for interpreting cards singularly or in a spread. It also includes nuanced descriptions of each sign’s archetypes to enhance your card reading.

Gary Goldschneider was a best-selling author of personology and astrology books. He studied astrology for forty years and frequently lectured and wrote on the subject. An accomplished pianist and composer, he performed in concerts and recitals worldwide. He lived in Amsterdam.

A+ PARENTING d’Eva Moskowitz

Eva Moskowitz, founder of the highly lauded Success Academy Charter Schools, shares her advice for raising smart, successful, and intellectually engaged children.

A+ PARENTING:
The Surprisingly Fun Guide to Raising Surprisingly Smart Kids
by Eva Moskowitz
Harvest/HarperCollins, October 2023

Eva Moskowitz has built a national reputation as the founder and leader of Success Academy Charter Schools, one of the country’s most highly regarded networks of schools, but while most people know Eva for her success in educating 20,000 mainly low-income students who are routinely accepted to our nation’s best universities, she has also been responsible for raising three children of her own. In A+ PARENTING, Eva shares what she has learned both as a parent and an educator about raising children to be enthusiastic and successful learners.
Eva’s most important message is that parents can and should play a critical role in their children’s intellectual development. Each year, children only spend about 180 days in school; how they spend the remaining 185 days is up to their parents. Children who continue to learn when they are out of school will make far more progress than those who don’t, but parents need not attempt to recreate school at home. Instead, they can encourage their children to engage in fun activities that will have a huge impact on their creativity, intellectual curiosity, and attention span.
A+ PARENTING is every parent’s must-have guide to enriching every aspect of a child’s life, from the morning carpool to the soccer field to the dinner table—without having to hire tutors or carve out more hours in the day. Moskowitz explains how to take the time you’re already spending with your children and make it more fulfilling and intellectually stimulating for them. The book is full of practical guidance such as:

• Which extracurricular activities are best for a child’s development.
• How children can learn by watching movies and playing games—and why you should reach for chess or Monopoly over checkers or Candyland.
• How to help your child overcome a learning disability and ensure it doesn’t undermine their self-confidence.
• Why getting angry at children doesn’t work but expressing disappointment does.

In addition to advice, this book is filled with carefully curated lists of educational activities, including games to play, movies to watch, puzzles to solve, books to read, music to listen to, and experiments to perform. These activities, supported with love and joy, are all parents need to turn their children into lifelong learners.

Eva Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools and a former New York City council member. She has a PhD in American history from Johns Hopkins University and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School. She lives in Harlem with her husband and their three children.

THROUGH THE WILDERNESS de Brad Orsted

Award-winning Yellowstone photographer and documentary filmmaker Brad Orsted’s seven-year search for refuge and redemption in America’s greatest wilderness.

THROUGH THE WILDERNESS:
My Journey of Redemption and Healing in the American Wild
by Brad Orsted
St. Martin’s Press, June 2023
(via The Rights Factory)

When Brad Orsted’s fifteen-month-old daughter, Marley, died mysteriously at the home of Brad’s mother, he descended into madness. Blaming himself, he plunged into an abyss of grief, guilt, and self-recrimination, fueled by prescription drugs and alcohol. He planned his suicide as his wife, Stacey, searched for a new beginning. She finally found a job in Yellowstone National Park and, with their daughters, Mazzy and Chloe, the pair fled Michigan, looking for refuge and redemption in the 2.2 million acres of glorious American wilderness.
THROUGH THE WILDERNESS begins in Yellowstone, five months after the family’s arrival in 2012, when, in an alcoholic haze, Brad stumbled into a field of sage and survived a face-to-face encounter with an adult male grizzly bear. For the first time in almost two years, he realized he wanted to live―he just didn’t know how.
Desperate for help, Brad invited himself to a Crow sweat lodge ceremony, where an elder told him it was time to stop grieving. The elder’s words started Brad on a journey towards sobriety and inner peace, only possible because of lessons he learned in the wild, his new job as a wildlife photographer and filmmaker, and two orphan grizzly cubs who carried him back home and taught him how to live again.
Brad’s ten-year odyssey is about finding the wild inside the human heart. It is a journey of the spirit― a journey to forgiveness and sobriety, to love and life, to memory, and ultimately, to Marley.

Brad Orsted’s instinct for storytelling started early when someone gave him a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera as a child. Decades later Brad’s passion for wildlife cinematography and photography would not only earn him work with top networks like: Nat Geo Wild, The BBC, PBS, Nature, and The Smithsonian Channel, but also become part of his recovery after the tragic death of his daughter, Marley. Brad now resides in Paradise Valley, Montana, where he is hard at work on his second book and his wilderness therapy programs also called, Through the Wilderness. Brad’s film with Jeff Bridges and Doug Peacock, “The Beast of Our Time” recently won Best Environmental Film Award at the prestigious L.A. Doc Film Festival. A second film is in the making.

THE CAVE d’Amani Ballour

Written in the tradition of I Am Malala and based on the Oscar-nominated documentary The Cave, this searing memoir tells the inspiring story of a young doctor and activist who ran an underground hospital in Damascus, illuminating and humanizing the enduring crisis in Syria.

THE CAVE:
A Woman’s Story of Survival in Syria
by Amani Ballour
National Geographic, March 2024
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Simply put, there is no one in Syria with a story like Dr. Amani Ballour. The only woman to have ever run a wartime hospital, she saved her peers from the atrocities of war while contending with the patriarchal conservatism around her.
Growing up in Assad’s Syria, Dr. Ballour knew she wanted to be more than a housewife, even as her siblings were married off in their teens. As the revolution unfolded, she volunteered at a local clinic and was immediately thrown into the deep end of emergency medicine. Here, she found her voice and the courage to continue.
Among the facets of this powerful tale: Becoming a hospital director. Shielding children from a horrific sarin attack. Losing colleagues. Starvation during the hospital siege. Attempting to employ more women in the hospital and challenging the patriarchy. Abandoning the hospital. Becoming a refugee. Living with trauma. Moving forward.
Amani Ballour is a role model and a game changer who, like Malala Yousafzai, will be remembered as one of history’s great heroines. She is an incredibly brave, passionately committed young humanitarian who, though deeply wounded by her experiences, is not content to quietly deal with her own trauma. Instead, Ballour is determined to seek justice and to do her utmost to ensure that others will not have to face the horrors that she survived.

Amani Ballour graduated from the University of Damascus in 2012. She began her pediatrics specialization before abandoning her studies to help the people of her hometown, under attack from the Assad regime, in an underground medical facility known as The Cave. In 2018, as Assad’s forces closed in, Ballour was forcibly displaced to northern Syria before settling in the United States with her husband in 2021. She is the recipient of the Council of Europe’s prestigious Raoul Wallenberg Prize. She lives in Patterson, New Jersey.
Rania Abouzeid is a multi-award-winning Lebanese-Australian journalist who has reported from across the Middle East for some two decades. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time magazine, National Geographic, and other outlets. She lives in Beirut, Lebanon.