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Shake It Off!
by Vanessa Brantley-NewtonThe whimsical tale of a clever little goat who rises above everything that threatens to keep her downMeet a sweet, curious little goat, who loves to sing and climb on everything. Some neighbors find her annoying, but nothing can keep her down—even when she gets stuck in a well and it looks like she&’s doomed. When everyone has given up on her, the clever goat surprises them all by taking advantage of her precarious predicament to win the day!Inspired by Vanessa Brantley-Newton&’s own experiences with adversity, this playful story about persistence, determination, and thinking outside the box is sure to make readers cheer.
Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism
by George Monbiot Peter HutchisonWe live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental well-being; the planet we inhabit—the very air we breathe. It is everywhere. Yet for most people, it has no name. It seems inescapable, like a natural law.But trace it back to its roots, and you see that this ideology is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived and propagated—and then concealed—by the powerful few. Our task is to bring it into the light—and to build a new system that is worth fighting for. Neoliberalism.Do you know what it is?
We Could Be Heroes
by Philip EllisNot all heroes wear capes. Some wear high heels and a wig.Patrick's acting career is on the rise, and the superhero movie he's filming might put him on the map . . . if the endless reshoots ever stop. Meanwhile, Will, a secondhand bookseller and part-time drag queen, is just trying to live his best life. After a chance encounter on a particularly chaotic night, a curious friendship sparks between the two men.At least, that&’s what they tell each other. Sure, Patrick finds Will captivatingly hilarious, and Will can&’t help but keep thinking about who is really behind the perfect mask Patrick shows the rest of the world, but nothing could ever really happen, right? Superheroes don&’t date drag queens, after all.When reality crashes into the fantasy world they&’ve built together, Will has to make a choice between the man of his dreams and being true to himself. Can Patrick be the hero Will&’s been waiting for, or will Will be the one to save Patrick after all? Uproarious and touching, We Could Be Heroes is an ode to queer joy and a romance that just might save the world.
Stuart Woods' Smolder (A Stone Barrington Novel #65)
by Brett BattlesIn this latest adrenaline-fueled adventure in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, Stone Barrington faces his most vindictive threat yet.Finally enjoying some downtime in Santa Fe, Stone Barrington agrees to attend an art exhibit with a dear friend. There, he encounters an intriguing woman who is on the trail of a ring of art thieves. Always one to please, Stone offers his help.From Santa Fe to Los Angeles, it quickly becomes clear that her investigation has links to Stone—particularly to rare Matilda Stone art, his mother&’s paintings. And when old grudges come to light, Stone is forced to reckon with a familiar enemy. Stone must act fast before whoever is out to get him finally closes in on him . . . for good.
Negotiating While Black: Be Who You Are to Get What You Want
by Damali PetermanA real-world, one-of-a-kind resource for anyone who has ever been underestimated, overlooked, or misunderstood at the negotiating table.There&’s no shortage of negotiation books that advise you to &“get to yes,&” urge you to &“never split the difference,&” and push you to &“ask for more.&” But these one-size-fits-all negotiation techniques disregard the reality of our complex, multifaceted, multicultural world, where snap judgements are made based on perceived differences. When bias lies behind every negotiation, the only constant is you. Learn to leverage who you are—and gain the upperhand.Negotiating While Black is the indispensable guide that lawyer and mediator Damali Peterman wishes had existed earlier, as she navigated workplaces as the only Black woman, advocated for her children attending predominantly white schools, and mediated countless other bias-ridden settings. Drawing on these experiences together with decades of wisdom as a trained negotiator in high-stakes situations, Peterman has developed successful strategies notably absent from other top negotiation books—tactics that work for all people, no matter your identity. From the Foundational Five skills to the Negotiation Superpowers, these tried-and-true techniques will lift you to the next level of winning.Whether negotiating in the boardroom or in everyday life, Peterman shows how everything is potentially up for discussion—even when stakes (and emotions) are high. You can&’t control bias, but by being yourself, you actually have a better shot at getting what you want. Because when you arrive prepared and proud of who you are, you&’ll reap the rewards.
Experienced: A Novel
by Kate Young&“A fizzing, lip-chewing, collar-bone biting, palm-sweating roller-coaster of a rom-com that is both the sexiest book you'll read all year and the most heartening.&” —Caroline O'Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of The Rachel Incident&“A joyful, exhilarating romp of a romance!&” —Ashley Herring Blake, bestselling author of Iris Kelly Doesn&’t Date Bette is in love for the first time in her life. Finally, everything makes sense. Until it doesn&’t.As Bette approached thirty, she realized something big: she&’s into women. And then she fell for Mei, who&’s entirely perfect. Until, out of the blue, Mei suggests they take a break. She wants Bette to have the opportunity she missed out on in her twenties: to explore the queer dating scene, and then return certain about their future, her desires, and herself.Reluctantly, Bette sets out on a mission: date hot women and have hot casual sex, before returning to her loving girlfriend. Maybe, put that way, it doesn&’t sound so bad…Often heady and thrilling, occasionally cringe, Bette&’s odyssey will take her to some unexpected places. But with her new friend, the gorgeous and self-assured Ruth, as her queer dating guide, Bette can&’t possibly fail. Right?
Isabel and The Rogue (The Luna Sisters #2)
by Liana De la RosaWhen a Mexican heiress defies Victorian society to protect her country a British war hero makes it his new mission to protect her… Isabel Luna Valdés has long since resigned herself to being the &“forgotten&” Luna sister. But thanks to familial connections to the Mexican ambassador in London, wallflower Isabel is poised to unearth any British intelligence hidden by the ton that might aid Mexico during the French Occupation. Though she slips easily from crowded ballrooms into libraries and private studies, Isabel&’s search is hampered by trysting couples and prowling rogues—including the rakish Captain Sirius Dawson. As a covert agent for the British Home Office, Sirius makes a game of earning the aristocracy&’s confidence. He spends his days befriending foolish politicians and seducing well-born ladies in order to learn their secrets. But after he spies a certain sharp-tongued Luna sister lurking in the shadows where no proper debutante should venture, it&’s clear Sirius is outmatched, outwitted, and soon to be outmaneuvered by the one woman he can&’t resist. Their mutual attraction is undeniable, but when Isabel discovers private correspondence that could turn the tide of political turmoil in Mexico, she&’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect her country—even if this means ignoring her heart and courting danger...
Seven Summer Weekends
by Jane L. RosenA woman inherits a beach house, along with a series of weekend guests, while butting heads with the irritable (and irritatingly handsome) man next door, in this sparkling new escape from Jane L. Rosen. When a Zoom disaster upends Addison Irwin&’s decade-long career at a posh Manhattan advertising agency, things look bleak for the thirty-something mid-western transplant. But an unexpected inheritance from an aunt she barely remembers—a property on Fire Island, complete with guest house and artist&’s studio—changes everything. While debating whether to stay or sell, Addison learns that she&’s also inherited her aunt&’s list of eclectic guests, tying her to the island for seven summer weekends. Eager to convince Addison to keep the house rather than let a new buyer build a monstrosity in its place, the neighbors welcome her to their laid-back community. Well, all except the moody guy next door, who seems intent on glowering his way through life. Steadfast in her path since college, Addison is determined not to let this detour on Fire Island throw her off track. But soon, between the revolving door of weekend visitors and the up-and-down relationship with her neighbor (and his adorable dog), she finds herself in unfamiliar territory. Should she try to pick up where she left off—or embrace entirely new possibilities?
America's Dreaming
by Bob McKinnonFrom New York Times bestselling author Bob McKinnon comes a story about seeking inspiration from our past to become our best selves in the future.Have you ever felt alone? Have you ever desperately wanted to fit in? America understands how you feel.America dreams of adventures, making new friends, and being strong. But America&’s first day at a new school turns out to be a nightmare.Fortunately, America&’s new teacher introduces the Welcome Wagon—a cart filled with books about real-life historical figures who also had trouble feeling accepted. When America falls asleep that night, Amelia Earhart, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King Jr., and Emma Lazarus jump off the pages to share their stories—inspiring America to return to school the next day and make their dreams come true.While we never see America, Bob McKinnon&’s lyrical writing and Thai My Phuong&’s unique, sweeping art helps readers see the world through America&’s eyes and encourages us all to be as kind as we are brave, because everyone always deserves to feel welcome.
Cole and Laila Are Just Friends: A Love Story
by Bethany TurnerCole and Laila have been inseparable since they could crawl. And they've never thought about each other that way. Except for when they have. Rarely. Once in a while, sure. But seriously . . . hardly ever.Cole Kimball and Laila Olivet have been best friends their entire lives. Cole is the only person (apart from blood relatives) who's seen Laila in her oversized, pink, plastic, Sophia Loren glasses. Laila is always the first person to taste test any new dish Cole creates in his family's restaurant . . . even though she has the refined palate of a kindergartener. Most importantly, Cole and Laila are always talking. About everything.When Cole discovers a betrayal from his recently deceased grandfather that shatters his world, staying in Adelaide Springs, Colorado, is suddenly unfathomable. But Laila loves her life in their small mountain town and can't imagine ever living anywhere else. She loves serving customers who tip her with a dozen fresh eggs. She loves living within walking distance of all her favorite people. And she's very much not okay with the idea of not being able to walk to her very favorite person.Still, when Cole toys with moving across the country to New York City, she decides to support her best friend--even as she secretly hopes she can convince him to stay home. And not just for his killer chocolate chip pancakes. Because she loves him. As a friend. Just as a friend. Right?They make a deal: Laila won't beg him to stay, and Cole won't try to convince her to come with him. They have one week in New York before their lives change forever, and all they have to do is enjoy their time together and pretend none of this is happening. But it's tough to ignore the very inconvenient feelings blooming out of nowhere. In both of them. And these potentially friendship-destroying feelings, once out in the open, have absolutely no take-backs.If When Harry Met Sally had a quippy literary love child with Gilmore Girls' Luke and Lorelai, you'd get Cole and Laila. Just . . . don't tell them that.
Nice Work, Nora November
by Julia LondonNow that Nora is not dead, only one question remains: What does she want to do with her life?Nora November is alive—but she wasn&’t always. She was once clinically dead, having spent several minutes under water after a terrible surfing accident she doesn&’t remember. What she does remember from her time in a coma is her grandfather, who passed away over a year ago. And a beautiful garden. And the most delicious tomato she ever tasted.Now that she&’s awake again her life has been cleaved in two. In the Before, Nora lived like a ghost, drowning under the weight of her parents&’ expectations. In the After, she&’s determined to accomplish the things she left undone before she died. Her reverse bucket list is simple: She wants to learn to cook and to be a better older sister to Lacey. She wants to quit her terrible job as a personal injury lawyer at her dad&’s firm. She wants to bring Grandpa&’s now-neglected garden back to life. And she wants to find the guy she met in a corner store months ago—the one she never called but never stopped thinking about.As Nora&’s attempts at a new life prove disastrous at best, her mission to fulfill her reverse bucket list leads her to a reckoning with the truth she almost hid from herself.Women&’s fiction with just a hint of light romanceStand-alone novelPerfect for fans of Linda Holmes, Matt Haig, and Abi WaxmanBook length: 100,000 wordsIncludes discussion questions for book clubs
The Energy Advantage: How to Go from Managing Your Time to Mastering Your Energy
by Ricardo SunderlandHow do you maximize your success and impact as a leader while maintaining your stamina and sanity? The answer doesn&’t lie in simple &“efficiency.&” It&’s not about making better use of your time and resources. It&’s about understanding how energy works and how to tap into its power.Many people live lives of intense, and false, emotional compartmentalization. For example, they strive to be one person in the corner office (invincible warrior) and another person at the dinner table (sensitive spouse), and they struggle to keep those two lives from bleeding into and contradicting each other. But as it turns out, this takes a tremendous amount of energy and is almost always impossible. One person can&’t be two different people.So how do you live an integrated life of fulfillment, purpose, and success? How do you create an alignment between head, heart, and the creative power that is in coherence with your true self? The answer is both simple and complex: You need to move from managing your time to mastering your energy.For more than a decade and a half, Ricardo Sunderland has worked with the leaders of some of the largest and most recognizable companies in the world. He has learned firsthand that for today&’s leaders—at all levels in their organizations—mental and physical energy are no longer all you need for success. Today&’s leaders must bring emotional and spiritual energy to their roles and create a space in which both they and their team members feel safe to challenge each other, grow together, and thrive.Given this major leadership challenge, leaders must gain the energy advantage.You will learn:What gives you energy.How to identify the energy blockers that are holding you back.That every situation presents a choice for you to unlock the transformational source of energy within you.The path to gaining the energy advantage on seven distinct levels.
I Forgive You
by Scott Jones Robert ChafeFirst produced by Artistic Fraud at Arts and Culture Centre, St. John’s, in August 2022
Becoming Green Gables: The Diary of Myrtle Webb and Her Famous Farmhouse
by Alan MacEachernIn 1909 Myrtle and Ernest Webb took possession of an ordinary farm in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. Ordinary but for one thing: it was already becoming known as inspiration for Anne of Green Gables, the novel written by Myrtle’s cousin Lucy Maud Montgomery and published to international acclaim a year earlier. The Webbs welcomed visitors to “Green Gables” and soon took in summer boarders, making their home the heart of PEI’s tourist trade. In the 1930s the farm was made the centrepiece of a new national park – and still the family lived there for another decade, caretakers of their own home.During these years Myrtle kept a diary. When she first picked up the pencil in 1924, she was a forty-year-old homemaker running a household of eight. By the time she set the pencil down in 1954, she was a seventy-year-old widow, no longer resident in what was now the most famous house in Canada. Becoming Green Gables tells the story of Myrtle Webb and her family, and the making of Green Gables. Alan MacEachern reproduces a selection of the diary’s daily entries, using them as springboards to examine topics ranging from the adoption of modern conveniences to the home front hosting of soldiers in wartime and visits from “Aunt Maud” herself.While the foundation of Becoming Green Gables is the Webbs’ own story, it is also a history of their famous home, their community, the nation, and the world in which they lived.
Kiss the Undertow: A Novel
by Marie-Hélène LarochelleThe water slurps my shoulders, torso, and back in a big, wet kiss, bending my image into an ironic clone of the truth. I bow to its dominance and let it break me open. The water alone will have me. Watched obsessively by her guru-like coach, a nameless swimmer battles the element of water in a gruelling physical regimen. Outside of training, she floats loose in waters murky, salty, and chlorinated, engaging in aimless self-destruction, restraint looming just beyond her drifting hand. Incrementally, swimming is killing her; the pool is killing her. Hovering always nearby is a prickly vulture, waiting to feed on the swimmer’s remains … Intense and immersive, Kiss the Undertow is a psychologically gripping account of endurance pushed to extremes.
Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology 2024: A Selection of the Shortlist (The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology)
by Nicole Lambe Edited by Albert F. MoritzThe prestigious and highly anticipated annual anthology of the best poetry in English from the shortlist of the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize. Each year, the best books of poetry published in English are honoured with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious and richest literary awards. Since 2001, this annual prize has tremendously spurred interest in and recognition of poetry, focusing worldwide attention on the formidable talent of poets writing in English and works in translation. Annually, The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology features the work of the extraordinary poets shortlisted for the awards and introduces us to some of the finest poems in their collections.
Voting Online: Technology and Democracy in Municipal Elections (McGill-Queen's Studies in Urban Governance)
by Zachary Spicer Scott Pruysers Nicole Goodman R. Michael McGregor Helen A. HayesIn an attempt to reverse declining rates of voter participation, governments around the world are turning to electronic voting to improve the efficiency of vote counts, and increase the accessibility and equity of the voting process for electors who may face additional barriers. The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified this trend.Voting Online focuses on Canada, where the technology has been widely embraced by municipal governments with one of the highest rates of use in the world. In the age of cyber elections, Canada is the only country where governments offer fully remote electronic elections and where traditional paper voting is eliminated for entire electorates. Municipalities are the laboratories of electoral modernization when it comes to digital voting reform. We know conspicuously little about the effects of these changes, particularly the elimination of paper ballots.Relying on surveys of voters, non-voters, and candidates in twenty Ontario cities, and a survey of administrators across the province of Ontario, Voting Online provides a holistic view of electronic elections unavailable anywhere else.
Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas: Essays
by Gloria BlizzardA diasporic collection of essays on music, memory, and motion.In this powerful and deeply personal collection, Gloria Blizzard uses traditional narrative essays, hybrid structures, and the tools of poetry to negotiate the complexities of culture, geography, and language in an international diasporic quest.These essays of wayfinding accompany anyone exploring issues of belonging — to a family, a neighbourhood, a group, or a country. Here, the small is profound, the intimate universal; the questions are all relevant and the answers of our times require simultaneous multiple perspectives.
Beauty Matters: Modern Japanese Literature and the Question of Aesthetics, 1890–1930 (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University)
by Anri YasudaThe notion of beauty is inherently elusive: aesthetic judgments are at once subjective and felt to be universally valid. In Beauty Matters, Anri Yasuda demonstrates that by exploring the often conflicting yet powerful pull of aesthetic sentiments, major authors of the late Meiji (1868–1912) and Taishō (1912–1926) periods illuminated themes and perspectives that resonated broadly in modern Japanese society. This approach presents an alternative to conventional accounts in which Japanese literature before the modernist turn of the 1920s has tended to be defined by an insular focus on subjective representation and autobiographical realism.Yasuda investigates how Natsume Sōseki, Mori Ogai, Mushanokōji Saneatsu and his peers at Shirakaba magazine, and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke sought to identify the aesthetic properties of literature through comparisons with the visual arts. They also considered the position of Japanese cultural sensibilities within the Eurocentric imperial world order. Their stories featuring painters and paintings weigh the fundamental challenge of representing anything when the conditions of knowledge are in flux, and their stories about cross-cultural encounters display both hope and ambivalence about the prospect of cosmopolitanism. Yasuda shows how thinking about beauty and art enabled these authors to surpass purely “literary” concerns. By tracing the wide-reaching significance of aesthetic affect in literary thought, Beauty Matters destabilizes received conceptions of literature’s parameters and affirms literature’s continued potential to intervene in cultural discourses in Japan and beyond.
Cross-Cultural Harlem: Reimagining Race and Place
by Sandhya ShuklaOver the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Harlem has been the capital of both Black America and a global African diaspora, an early home for Italian and Jewish immigrant communities, an important Puerto Rican neighborhood, and a representative site of gentrification. How do we understand the power of a place with so many claims and identifications? Drawing on fiction, sociology, political speech, autobiography, and performance, Sandhya Shukla develops a living theory of Harlem, in which peoples of different backgrounds collide, interact, and borrow from each other, even while Blackness remains crucial.Cross-Cultural Harlem reveals a dynamic of exchange that provokes a rethinking of spaces such as Black Harlem, El Barrio, and Italian Harlem. Cross-cultural encounters among African Americans, West Indians, Puerto Ricans, Jews, and Italians provide a story of multiplicity that challenges the framework of territorial enclaves. Shukla illuminates the historical processes that have shaped the diversity of Harlem, examining the many dimensions of its Blackness—Southern, African, Caribbean, Puerto Rican, and more—as well as how white ethnicities have been constructed. Considering literary and historical examples such as Langston Hughes’s short story “Spanish Blood,” the career of the Italian American left-wing Harlem congressman Vito Marcantonio, and the autobiography of Puerto Rican–Cuban writer Piri Thomas, Shukla argues that cosmopolitanism and racial belonging need not be seen as contradictory. Cross-Cultural Harlem offers a vision of sustained dialogue to respond to the challenges of urban transformations and to affirm the future of Harlem as actual place and global symbol.
Representation: The Birth of Historical Reality from the Death of the Past (Columbia Themes in Philosophy)
by Franklin Rudolf AnkersmitWhat makes historical writing distinctive? In Representation, Franklin Rudolf Ankersmit—the preeminent figure in the philosophy of history today—offers a deeply original way of understanding the practice of historical writing and a powerful vindication of history as an empirical discipline. Based on a new reading of the philosophy of G. W. Leibniz, Ankersmit constructs a rigorous framework for understanding the nature of historical argument.Representation argues that while previous states of affairs have left evidence that can be used to formulate true statements, the past itself is irretrievably lost. A condition of historical writing is that the past as such does not exist. Historical texts are best understood as complex signs that mutually criticize one another to compose a historical reality fundamentally distinct from common-sense notions of the past.Representation casts an entirely new light on fundamental concepts such as historical truth, historical debate, and historical rationality. Cogent, forceful, and provocative, this book is the most ambitious work in the philosophy of history in many years.
Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism (New Directions in Critical Theory #86)
by Jonathan JudakenDespite its persistence and viciousness, anti-Semitism remains undertheorized in comparison with other forms of racism and discrimination. How should anti-Semitism be defined? What are its underlying causes? Why do anti-Semites target Jews? In what ways has Judeophobia changed over time? What are the continuities and disconnects between medieval anti-Judaism and the Holocaust? How does criticism of the state of Israel relate to anti-Semitism? And how can social theory illuminate the upsurge in attacks on Jews today?Considering these questions and many more, this book is at once a philosophical reflection on key problems in the analysis of anti-Semitism and a history of its leading theories and theorists. Jonathan Judaken explores the methodological and conceptual issues that have vexed the study of Judeophobia and calls for a reconsideration of the definitions, categories, and narratives that underpin overarching explanations. He traces how a range of thinkers have wrestled with these challenges, examining the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre, the Frankfurt School, Hannah Arendt, and Jean-François Lyotard, alongside the works of sociologists Talcott Parsons and Zygmunt Bauman and historians Léon Poliakov and George Mosse. Judaken argues against claims about the uniqueness of Judeophobia, demonstrating how it is entangled with other racisms: Islamophobia, Negrophobia, and xenophobia. Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism not only urges readers to question how they think about Judeophobia but also draws them into conversation with a range of leading thinkers whose insights are sorely needed in this perilous moment.
Pet, Pet, Slap
by Andrew BattershillRocky meets Elmore Leonard meets Miranda July as Pillow Wilson, a past-his-prime boxer, trains for his last title shot. Shenanigans ensue.Having recently undergone an ethical awakening, Pillow has converted to veganism and is in the middle of trying to rehome his menagerie of exotic pets (including Jersey Joe the sloth and Rigoberto the shark) in humane animal shelters. His roommate, Sherlock Holmes, has recently faked his own death by waterfall, and has now gone incognito and is Pillow’s in-house doping expert.The thing is, Pillow doesn’t feel all that motivated to train for his next big fight, and he’s further distracted from his training when his car and pet shark mysteriously disappear. Luckily, Sherlock is a master of deduction. What follows is part underdog sports story, part work of Neozoological Surrealism, and part existential mystery novel."Reckless, desperate, and achingly human, Battershill remains funnier than anyone else on your shelf." – Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold"The adventures of Battershill’s returning protagonist Pillow are witty and occasionally absurd, but the story never trips on ironies. Battershill twines the humanity of pulp noir with the unsettling play of surrealism to build a world in which pet sloths, Sherlock Holmes, and skilled drug pushers all seem to have found their ideal home." – Naben Ruthnum, author of A Hero of Our Time"Pillow Wilson is one of my favourite characters in CanLit, and he is in fine form in Pet, Pet, Slap, a deeply funny, inventive, bizarre, heartbreaker of a book. Andrew Battershill not only writes with that magical alchemy of humour and pathos that most writers only wish they could pull off, but he somehow also balances surrealism and profound humanity in a way I’m sure I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to figure out. I haven’t had this much fun reading in a long, long time." – Amy Jones, author of Pebble & Dove
Why War?
by Richard OveryWhy has war been such a consistent presence throughout the human past? A leading historian explains, drawing on rich examples and keen insight. Richard Overy is not the first scholar to take up the title question. In 1931, at the request of the League of Nations, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud to collaborate on a short work examining whether there was “a way of delivering mankind from the menace of war.” Published the next year as a pamphlet entitled Why War?, it conveyed Freud’s conclusion that the “death drive” made any deliverance impossible—the psychological impulse to destruction was universal in the animal kingdom. The global wars of the later 1930s and 1940s seemed ample evidence of the dismal conclusion. A preeminent historian of those wars, Overy brings vast knowledge to the title question and years of experience unraveling the knotted motivations of war. His approach is to separate the major drivers and motivations, and consider the ways each has contributed to organized conflict. They range from the impulses embedded in human biology and psychology, to the incentives to conflict developed through cultural evolution, to competition for resources—conflicts stirred by the passions of belief, the effects of ecological stresses, the drive for power in leaders and nations, and the search for security. The discussions show remarkable range, delving deep into the Neolithic past, through the twentieth-century world wars, and up to the current conflict in Ukraine. The examples are absorbing, from the Roman Empire’s voracious appetite for resources to the impulse to power evident in Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Hitler. The conclusion is not hopeful, but Overy’s book is a gift to readers: a compact, judicious, engrossing examination of a fundamental question.
Old King: A Novel
by Maxim LoskutoffIn this haunting novel about the end of the frontier dream, a man tries to reinvent himself in one of America’s last wild territories, while his neighbor begins a crime spree that will tremble the nation. In the summer of 1976, Duane Oshun finds himself stranded in a remote Montana town beset by a series of strange and menacing events. He takes a job as a logger and builds a cabin on an isolated road near a reclusive neighbor—a hermit named Ted Kaczynski. The two men are captivated by the valley’s endangered old-growth forest, but Kaczynski’s violent grievances against modern society soon threaten the lives of all those around him. As Kaczynski’s bombs crescendo to the book’s devastating conclusion, Old King wrestles with the birth of the modern environmental movement, the accelerating dominion of technology in American life, and a new kind of violence that lives next door. Told in four parts sweeping across two decades, Old King establishes Maxim Loskutoff as one of the most thrilling and inventive authors of the American west, a writer “endowed with fearless audacity, stunning grace, and gutsy heart” (Nickolas Butler).