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Future Cities Making: Mission-oriented Research for Urban Sustainability Transitions in Australia (Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions)
by Niki Frantzeskaki Peter Newton Deo Prasad Magnus Moglia Melissa Pineda PintoThis open access book describes the complex dynamics that coevolve in cities and from cities, to inform agendas for urban research and urban policy with a view to future city missions. It provides a suite of research-informed chapters on urban pathways that are early signals and visions for how future cities can be shaped and transformed as well as chapters from policy, industry and intermediary organization actors that relate and respond to these pathways from a mainstreaming and implementation perspective. This edited collection intends to trigger and capture an ambitious transformative agenda amongst researchers and practitioners who have as their mission to shape urban futures. While there is proliferating literature on cities, urbanism and urban governance, this book offers a unique selling point – implying a research positioning point – to the field of sustainability transitions by intersecting research on urban sustainability transitions and missions-oriented research. The focus on the nexus of game-changers, pathways and innovations sets the book firmly in the leading edge of urban transitions research. The book engages with a breadth of disciplines including sustainability science, urban planning, urban design, mobility, energy, climate change science, urban ecology, urban sociology, architecture, data science, sustainability transitions studies, policy analysis and policy studies, as well as environmental governance. As an output, it aims to engage with and inspire future research and teaching/education in the fields of architecture and urban planning, urban design, environmental governance, sustainability science, innovation studies and urban sociology.
The Changing Geography of National Parks and Protected Areas
by Joe Weber Selima SultanaThis book contains recent geographic work examining the changing geography of protected areas in the U.S. and Europe. These places can be national parks, forests, or other places that are being protected for their significant aesthetic, historical, or environmental values by governments and communities. These places can be studied with reference to their physical environments, the management of their plant and animal life, which places are to be protected, who visits these places (and who does not, and why not), and how we think of these places. This work includes examinations of many parks and issues that affect them, such as land degradation, the social and political geography involved in creating new national park units, visitation by underserved segments of the population, and the changing names of protected areas. It makes use of work using methods and data as diverse as remote sensing, nineteenth survey plats and GIS, and online visitor surveys.
Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality in China: Theory and Practice
by Dingming Xu Jinliang Li Chunguang ShengChina has made a major strategic decision to achieve carbon peak before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. The country has formulated a clear timetable, roadmap, and construction plan and introduced the “1+N” policy system from the top. This book provides a theoretical study and practical exploration of nine key aspects related to China's carbon peaking and carbon-neutral strategy: the background of Carbon Peaking and carbon neutrality, scientific and legal basis, strategic planning and path framework, energy-saving and carbon reduction measures, renewable energy, carbon sinks, carbon pricing mechanisms, the green financial system, and practical case studies.The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. The present version has been revised technically and linguistically by the authors in collaboration with a professional translator.
User Experience Design und Sustainability: Status Quo verstehen – Zukunft gestalten
by Olga Lange Katharina ClasenDieses Buch ist ein Handbuch für alle Gestalter*innen, die mit User Experience (UX) Design mehr zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung von Systemen, Produkten und Dienstleistungen beitragen möchten. Arbeitskreis "Design for Sustainability" der German UPA wurde im Jahr 2023 gegründet und widmet sich allen aktuellen Themen aus dem Bereich UX für Nachhaltigkeit. Als Grundlage für dieses Werk diente eine umfassende Umfrage der UX-Gestalter: innen zum Thema "Design for Sustainability". Somit wurde ein Status Quo erfasst, um die zukunftsweisenden Beiträge und Handlungsempfehlungen für die Zukunft auszuarbeiten. Viel Spaß beim Lesen und Umsetzen!
Target Search Problems
by Denis Grebenkov Ralf Metzler Gleb OshaninThis book presents cutting-edge research addressing the mathematical models used to tackle the "Target problem" as it manifests itself in a wide range of disciplines. Leading international experts from around the world describe a variety of different approaches to this truly multidisciplinary topic. Recent years have witnessed a substantial and still growing interest in understanding the general "Target problem". This encompasses a wide range of different situations in which some "agents" perform a deterministic or stochastic motion to search for a certain immobile or mobile "target". Such problems arise in many disciplines: to name but a few, computer science, the evolution of stock markets, biochemistry, bio-medicine, evolutionary games, as well as diverse areas of physics. This book with its up-to-date collection of chapters authored by leading experts in these and other fields, provides a comprehensive and complete picture in broadlyaccessible language. The book will naturally serve as a source of inspiration for further research, as well as facilitating a cross-fertilization of approaches, ideas, and research directions.
Singapore’s Policy Designs for Higher Education and Economic Development: Educating the Developmental State (SpringerBriefs in Education)
by J.J. WooThis book provides an overview of Singapore’s higher education system, focusing in particular on its role in supporting and facilitating the city-state’s economic development policies. It discusses the various components of Singapore’s post-secondary higher education system, such as its public and private universities, polytechnics, institutes of technical education, private educational institutions, foreign universities, government-affiliated and private training institutions, among others, and explicates the linkages between higher education and economic development. Aside from educational institutions, this book also discusses the Skills Future scheme, which provides deep skills training to working adults in collaboration with the Singapore’s various higher education providers.
CyberDynamX: The Art and Science of Building a Simplified Digital Security Program
by Curtis L. BlaisThis book simplifies the process of formalizing your cybersecurity program into something you can easily understand. Breaking down complex concepts into clear, manageable steps, the concepts are accessible even to those without a deep technical background. It ensures that more individuals within your organization can effectively contribute to building and maintaining a robust cybersecurity program. The book's structured framework focuses on the four key areas essential for any successful cybersecurity initiative, allowing you to prioritize efforts and transition from a reactive to a proactive stance. "CyberDynamX" addresses the common challenge of developing efficient and comprehensive cybersecurity programs. Many tasked with this responsibility are not dedicated cybersecurity professionals, often juggling these duties alongside their primary roles. This can lead to fragmented efforts and incomplete solutions. The book provides clear, concise guidance that is easy to follow, ensuring meaningful progress even for those new to cybersecurity. By offering practical, actionable advice, "CyberDynamX" helps streamline the development process, enabling you to build an effective cybersecurity program that meets your organization's needs swiftly and efficiently. What You Will Learn: The four things to radically focus on in building a functional cybersecurity program. The importance of Risk Management and the means to get started performing this function. The significant difference between Policy, Standards, Procedures, Guidance and Baselines; when to use each and how to build them. Who This Book is for: The market includes a wide range of professionals such as Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), IT managers, cybersecurity analysts, compliance officers, and risk management professionals who are tasked with developing, implementing and even reviewing effective security programs. Additionally, senior executives and board members seek guidance to ensure that their organizations are not only compliant with regulatory requirements but also resilient against cyber threats.
Professional Autonomy: A Guidebook for the Caring Professions (SpringerBriefs in Ethics)
by Ricardo A. AyalaAimed at supporting their emancipatory project, this book explores strategies for resisting dominance and enhancing agency within the caring professions. It helps bridge the gap between theoretical and practical autonomy in these fields, which have long been overshadowed by other professional groups. The book scrutinises the often-misunderstood notion of autonomy, which is frequently equated with mere independence—an equation that can paradoxically undermine, rather than improve, care quality. Additionally, it critiques the prevailing lack of a specific philosophical framework for practice. Existing literature typically approaches professional autonomy through a liberal philosophy lens or loosely assigns moral agency to groups, leading to a view of autonomous professions as analogous to autonomous individuals. By presenting a critical overview of the main schools of thought on autonomy—emphasising group autonomy and the specific challenges faced by caring professions—this book aims to fill a significant gap. It includes case studies to ground its theoretical insights in practical examples from real-world scenarios, helping the caring professions identify both autonomy issues and opportunities for enhancing autonomous practice.
Brainlesion: 9th International Workshop, BrainLes 2023, and 3rd International Workshop, SWITCH 2023, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2023, Vancouver, BC, Canada, October 8 and 12, 2023, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #14668)
by Alessandro Crimi Spyridon Bakas Ujjwal Baid Sylwia Malec Monika Pytlarz Reuben Dorent Ruisheng Su Navodini WijethilakeThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International MICCAI Brain Lesion Workshop, BrainLes 2023, as well as the Stroke Workshop on Imaging and Treatment Challenges, SWITCH 2023. These events were held in conjunction with the Medical Image Computing for Computer Assisted Intervention Conference, MICCAI 2023, during October 8-12, 2023. The 15 revised full papers presented in this volume were selected form 23 submissions. They describe the research of computational scientists and clinical researchers working on brain lesions, and specifically glioma, multiple sclerosis, cerebral stroke, traumatic brain injuries, vestibular schwannoma, and white matter hyper-intensities of presumed vascular origin.
Pediatric Endocrinology: A Practical Clinical Guide
by Sally Radovick Madhusmita MisraNow in its revised and updated fourth edition, this state-of-the-art clinical textbook presents the current diagnosis and management of pediatric endocrine diseases and disorders as seen by practicing endocrinologists and primary care physicians. Seven thematic sections present the latest evidence for the management of growth, hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal, thyroid, calcium and bone, and reproductive disorders, as well as metabolic syndromes and endocrine emergencies. This fourth edition includes new topics such as conditions of overgrowth, low bone density and its management, endocrine issues related to sexual identity, mineralocorticoid disorders and endocrine hypertension, and endocrine emergencies. All chapters have been expanded to discuss recent advances in the field, and each chapter contains key points, an introductory discussion of the problem, a review of the clinical features that characterize it, the criteria needed to establish a diagnosis, and a comprehensive therapy section delineating the risks and benefits of the best therapeutic options available. Completing each chapter are concluding sections presenting relevant case material and multiple-choice review questions for students, residents and fellows. Pediatric Endocrinology: A Practical Clinical Guide, Fourth Edition is a comprehensive resource for all clinicians concerned with the myriad endocrine disorders seen in children and adolescents.
Smart Applications and Sustainability in the AIoT Era (Sustainable Civil Infrastructures)
by Fadi Al-TurjmanThis book gathers recent research work on emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods for processing and storing data generated by smart infrastructures. Smart infrastructures gather Terabytes of data nowadays with no need for traditional control. The data automatically uploads to the cloud computing platform. The cloud analyses the data and generates the required output in visualization, graph, and action. A remote access network can be constructed dependent on either low-elevation or high-altitude stages. When associated with satellite and earthly frameworks, these stages empower a far-reaching access network with worldwide inclusion and diverse administration provisioning. Data analytics are used in agriculture, mining, waste management, energy, and military defenses. Major topics covered include the analysis and development of AI-powered mechanisms in future IoT and smart infrastructures applications. Further, the book addresses new technological developments, current research trends, and industry needs. Presenting case studies, experience and evaluation reports, and best practices in utilizing AI applications in IoT networks, it strikes a good balance between theoretical and practical issues. It also provides technical/scientific information on various aspects of AI technologies, ranging from basic concepts to research grade material, including future directions. The book is intended for researchers, practitioners, engineers and scientists involved in the design and development of protocols and AI applications for smart and sustainable infrastructure-related devices.
Radical Solutions for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation in Education: Utilising Disruptive Technology for a Better Society (Lecture Notes in Educational Technology)
by Chee-Kit Looi Ronghuai Huang Mohamed Jemni Daniel Burgos Ahmed Tlili Christian M. Stracke John Willian Branch Khalid Berrada Colin de la HigueraThis book facilitates understanding of how artificial intelligence (AI) aids and integrates digital transformation (DT) in education institutions worldwide in various scenarios: learning environments (learning innovation, learning management systems, data and analytics), emerging education trends (business trends, strategic technologies), administrative systems (recruit, retain, advance, enterprise business capabilities, student information systems), and digital strategy execution (business models and opportunities, strategic planning and governance). It serves as a reference for university lecturers, schoolteachers, policymakers, and international organizations, who will find in its various chapters practical recommendations and discoveries from practice, ready to be implemented in their contexts. Chapters 1, 2, 7 and 9 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Medieval Statistics: Accounting, Record-Keeping and Financial Management, 1066-1525 (Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance)
by Mark Casson John S. LeeThis book is the first to systematically examine the sources of medieval statistics. It will be useful as a handbook for researchers in financial and cultural history, as a history of financial record-keeping, and as a review of recent research into medieval finance and accounting based on statistical sources.Medieval statistics provide a unique window on the past. Medieval documents produced by royal governments, monastic and ecclesiastical institutions, urban boroughs and legal cases for debt recovery provide a mine of useful information on economic life and financial affairs. They show that medieval administration was far more numerate, and far more sophisticated than is usually recognized. This book provides a comprehensive review of the key sources, written by leading experts in the field. The strengths and weaknesses of each source are reviewed, using original documents for illustration, and discussing examples from the recent literature. The book is mainly concerned with English statistics, as they have survived particularly well in both state and private records, but which showcase the potential of digital technology in enabling systematic study of medieval primary sources where large databases can now be compiled from original manuscripts. This edited volume will be a valuable tool for those working in financial, cultural, and political history, as it seeks to analyse the various ways in which medieval life was documented numerically and the ways in which this information was used within existing power structures.
Hydrophobic Ceramic Membranes for CO2 Capture: Advancing Clean Energy Technologies (SpringerBriefs in Energy)
by Zhaohao Li Jinjin Yang Hongming Fu Haiping ChenThis book focuses on developing and optimizing ceramic membranes with hydrophobic and superhydrophobic properties for CO2 capture in membrane contactors, aimed at improving CO2 capture technology in thermal power plants and other industries. It examines the preparation of ceramic membranes, the mass transfer mechanisms in porous media, and the specific processes involved in capturing CO2. The book also compares the performance of commercial Al2O3 ceramic membranes with traditional polytetrafluoroethylene membranes and explores ways to enhance the efficiency of CO2 capture by addressing challenges such as membrane wetting and increased mass transfer resistance. Additionally, it introduces a cost-effective superhydrophobic ceramic membrane made from power plant waste fly ash, analyzing its performance and surface dynamics for CO2 capture applications. It is a useful tool for researchers, academics, professionals and graduates interested in the field of chemical engineering, environmental science, and materials science, particularly those focused on CO2 capture technologies, membrane science, and clean energy solutions.
The Palgrave Handbook of Global Digital Journalism
by Bruce Mutsvairo Kristin Skare OrgeretThis book responds to mounting calls to broaden the theorization of digital journalism, addressing critical questions about an emerging yet rapidly expanding area of study, and presenting multiple entry points and approaches that help us understand digital journalism better. Seeking to establish itself as a rich resource and a defining reference point for the evolving field, the handbook provides a critical appraisal and a useful overview of novel approaches and concepts, backed by a full breadth of dynamic and diverse interactions drawn from overlapping and critical studies by some of the leading experts on digital journalism. This handbook presents multiple methodological perspectives, reporting strategies, threats and opportunities and valuable insights on future trajectories for digital journalism practice in an era dominated by digital media technology. Split into four parts, it has been uniquely assembled to investigate and critique the full potential of digital journalism capturing broader, cross-cultural perspectives from all four corners of the world.
The Cloud Path: Poems
by Melissa KwasnyAn imaginative reworking of the elegy that focuses on the difficult work of being with the dying.At the heart of The Cloud Path, celebrated author Melissa Kwasny’s seventh collection of poetry, lies the passing of her beloved mother: the caretaking, the hospice protocols, the last breath, the aftermath. Simultaneously, she must also reckon with an array of global crises: environmental decline, the arrival of a pandemic, divisive social tensions. With so much loss building up around her, Kwasny turns to the natural world for guidance, walking paths lined with aspen, snow geese, and prickly pears. “I have come here for their peace and instructions,” she writes, listening to the willows, the “slant rhyme of their multi-limbed clatter.”What she finds is a new, more seasoned kind of solace. The Cloud Path glimmers with nature’s many lively colors—the “burnt orange” of foxes, “cedar / bark cast in the greenest impasto,” white swans intertwined. It also embraces the world’s harsher elements—a dark bog’s purple stench, a hayfield empty of birds. Witnessing life’s constant ebb and flow, the weight of personal and collective grief gradually becomes lighter. The shapes of clouds, cattle bones by the river. “Why not,” she asks, “believe it matters?Evocative and wrenching, The Cloud Path compels us to consider the whole of living and dying. An elegant juxtaposition of personal and planetary loss, these keen and tender poems teach us to see afresh in the lateness of things.
feeld
by Jos CharlesFINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZEFINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDA NEW YORKER BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2018A VULTURE BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2018A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018Selected by Fady Joudah as a winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, Jos Charles&’s revolutionary second collection of poetry, feeld, is a lyrical unraveling of the circuitry of gender and speech, defiantly making space for bodies that have been historically denied their own vocabulary. &“i care so much abot the whord i cant reed.&” In feeld, Charles stakes her claim on the language available to speak about trans experience, reckoning with the narratives that have come before by reclaiming the language of the past. In Charles&’s electrifying transliteration of English—Chaucerian in affect, but revolutionary in effect—what is old is made new again. &“gendre is not the tran organe / gendre is yes a hemorage.&” &“did u kno not a monthe goes bye / a tran i kno doesnt dye.&” The world of feeld is our own, but off-kilter, distinctly queer—making visible what was formerly and forcefully hidden: trauma, liberation, strength, and joy. Urgent and vital, feeld composes a new narrative of what it means to live inside a marked body.
Vessel: Poems
by Parneshia JonesWINNER OF THE MIDWEST BOOK AWARDThe imagination of a girl, the retelling of family stories, and the unfolding of a rich and often painful history: Parneshia Jones&’s debut collection explores the intersections of these elements of experience with refreshing candor and metaphorical purpose.A child of the South speaking in the rhythms of Chicago, Jones knits &“a human quilt&” with herself at the center. She relates everything from the awkward trip to Marshall Fields with her mother to buy her first bra to the late whiskey-infused nights of her father&’s world. In the South, &“lard sizzles a sermon from the stove&”; in Chicago, we feast on an &“opera of peppers and pimento.&” Jones intertwines the stories of her own family with those of historical black figures, including Marvin Gaye and Josephine Baker. Affectionate, dynamic, and uncommonly observant, these poems mine the richness of history to create a map of identity and influence.
Dreaming the Mountain
by Tu? S?The North American debut of Tuệ Sỹ—poet, monk, scholar, dissident, and one of the great cultural figures of modern Vietnam—and a new bilingual edition to the Seedbank series.In addition to being a preeminent scholar of world philosophy and a Zen master, TuệSỹ is one of Vietnam’s most celebrated poets. He is a survivor of sixteen years of imprisonment and an eloquent witness to the tumult, tragedy, and resilience of his country over the last sixty years—and a full-length translation of his work into English is long overdue.Assembled and co-translated by Vietnamese poet and essayist Nguyen Ba Chung and acclaimed American poet Martha Collins, Dreaming the Mountain reflects a lifetime of creation, crisis, and commitment. With poems presented on facing pages in Vietnamese and English, this volume includes the early imagism of Tuệ Sỹ’s Zen studies as a scholar and critic, midlife work that represents his attempted retreat from the devastation of war and subsequent years of imprisonment, and late, elliptical poems that give intensely lyrical expression to a lifetime of profound experience. From the “fleeting dream of red blood at dusk” to the quiet determination of one who sets out to “repaint the dawn,” these poems reflect the journey of an artist who speaks for his country, who captures its darkness and its light.At once personal and universal, coolly observant and deeply compassionate, the poems of Tuệ Sỹ bring singular attention to a fleeting, painfully beautiful world.
The Wish Book: Poems
by Alex Lemon"To read this book is to meet a man who would climb the sky." —BOB HICOKIn his follow-up to Fancy Beasts, a book that &“slice[d] straight through nerve and marrow on its way to the heart and mind of the matter&” (Tracy K. Smith), Alex Lemon dazzles with his exuberance and candor. Whether in unrestrained descriptions of sensory overload or tender meditations on fatherhood and mortality, Lemon blurs the nebulous line between the personal and the pop-cultural. These poems are full of frenetic energy and images pleasantly, strangely colliding: jigsaws and bathtubs and kung-fu and X-rays. A carnival barker calls. A jellyfish celebrates a shaky adulthood. A sliding door shatters with the passing through of a body. And a heart is &“ecstatically / Torn apart like Twizzlers.&”Lean and muscular, The Wish Book is a collection of fireworks and wild emotion, defined by Lemon&’s distinct brand of poetic edginess.
You Must Remember This: Poems
by Michael Bazzett&“Hauntingly fable-like and delightfully idiosyncratic.&” —ADA LIMÓNA woozy logic dominates these poems: a heart can become a buzzing hive of bees, a rooster can trigger a series of bombs, a young man can embrace a city bus as his spirit animal. Yet in this collection—selected by Kevin Prufer as the winner of the 2014 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry—Michael Bazzett slices through his poems with a dangerous sense of humor. &“Your humor is deft and cutting / my fingers off one by one.&” Once dismembered, Bazzett&’s poems can re-member us and piece together the ways in which we once thought we knew ourselves, creating a new, strange sense of self.A meditation on who we are, who we&’ve been, and what we might become, Bazzett&’s writing is like a note written in invisible ink: partially what we see on the page, but also the &“many dozen doorways that we don&’t walk through each day.&” You Must Remember This is a consistently slippery, enrapturing collection of poems.
Call Up the Waters: Stories
by Amber CaronA magnetic debut collection of stories about the daily lives and labors of girls and women in rural America.In Call Up the Waters, the natural world is an escape hatch, a refuge, a site of work, and an occasional antagonist. In the title story, a devastating drought leads a mother of two deep into the Colorado Rockies in search of water. In “The Handler,” a woman leaves her boyfriend for the New Hampshire woods and fifty-seven sled dogs. A distress call from a boat in Massachusetts Bay compels a mother, in “Sea Women,” to plumb her daughter’s secrets. A girl torn between truth and expectation shows her courage in a funereal performance in “Barn Burning.” And in “Bending the Map,” a woman turns the tables on her obsessive, would-be lover after a powerful storm ravages her canyon home.The characters in these ten stories—search-and-rescue workers, dog trainers, naturalists, archaeologists, and dowsers—are each fundamentally shaped by the environment in which they live and work. They seek meaning through labor, connection through jobs. But in that searching they often find themselves far from their destination. Familiar landscapes suddenly feel strange. Unfamiliar spaces offer something like hope. Off the map and off the grid, these characters, and their regrets and devotions, are nevertheless immediately, intimately recognizable.Sharply observant but steadily elegant, textured with empathy and grit, Call Up the Waters marks the arrival of a remarkable new talent.
The Century: Poems
by Éireann LorsungA meticulously detailed catalogue of ordinary people performing acts of extraordinary violence, The Century charts an awakening to structures of dominance and violence. In the tradition of witness poetry, The Century tugs apart the quotidian horrors required to perpetuate acts of violence like the Holocaust, the deployment of nuclear weapons in Japan and Iraq, American slavery and its lingering aftermath. When Éireann Lorsung writes of death and dying, of “bodies in the fields becoming the fields,” it’s the simplicity that’s most haunting. After a fire, “some of their skin moved off of them as they ran, a very / simple melting…” But these poems don’t just witness; they also resist and serve as models for resistant lives. Pushing back against form and grammar, constructions of time and geography, Lorsung traces decades of technological, geopolitical, and cultural shifts through generations and across continents as networks of dominance continue to be stubbornly upheld. The Century is evasive but thorny, splintering in the mind. This collection is a reminder that the arrival of each new century, decade, or year brings with it an invitation to join ongoing movements of resistance, air pockets of hope in the waters that we all swim or drown in.
Painting Beyond Walls: A Novel
by David RhodesIt is 2027. August Helm is thirty years old. A biochemist working in a lab at the University of Chicago, he is swept off his feet by the beautiful and entirely self-assured Amanda Clark. Animated by August’s consuming desire, their relationship quickly becomes intimate. But when he stumbles across a liaison between the director of his lab and a much younger student, his position is eliminated and his world upended.August sets out to visit his parents in Words, an unincorporated village in the heart of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. Here, he reconnects with several characters from his past: Ivan Bookchester, who now advocates for “new ways of living” in an age of decline; Hanh, formerly known as Jewelweed, who tends her orchard and wild ginseng, keenly attuned to new patterns of migration resulting from climate change and habitat destruction; and Lester Mortal, the aging veteran and fierce pacifist who long ago rescued her from Vietnam. Together, the old friends fall back into a familiar closeness.But much as things initially seem unchanged in the Driftless, when August is hired to look after Tom and April Lux’s home in Forest Gate, he finds himself in the midst of an entirely different social set, made up of wealthy homeowners who are mostly resented by the poorer surrounding communities, and distanced in turn by their fear of the locals. August soon falls head over heels for April, and different versions of his self collide: one in which the past is still present in tensions and dreams, another in which he understands his desire as genetically determined and chemically induced, and then a vaguely hoped-for future with April. When Lester is diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, Ivan comes clean on a ghastly past episode, and April makes a shocking revelation, a series of events ensues that will change all involved forever. As approachable as it is profound in exploring the human condition and our shared need for community, this is a story for our times.
The Last Language: A Novel
by Jennifer duBoisFrom Jennifer duBois, “one of a handful of living American novelists who can comprehend both the long arc of history and the minute details that animate it” (Karan Mahajan) and “a writer of thrilling psychological precision” (Justin Torres), comes a spellbinding new novel.A few months after the death of her husband, Angela is ejected from her doctoral program in linguistics at Harvard University. Spinning and raw, and with few other options, the young widow and her four-year-old daughter move into her mother’s house in Medford, Massachusetts.Trained with an understanding of spoken language as the essential foundation of thought, Angela finds underpaid work at the Center, a fledgling organization that is developing an experimental therapy aimed at helping nonverbal patients with motor impairments. Through the Center, Angela begins to work closely with Sam, a twenty-seven-year-old patient who has been confined to his bedroom for the majority of his life. Following some faltering steps, Sam takes to the technology, proving to be not just literate but literary, and charming. Angela is initially stunned, then drawn intensely to Sam, and they develop an intimate relationship.When their secret is discovered, Sam’s family intervenes and brings charges. As Angela tells her story in the form of an unrepentant plea addressed from prison to her beloved, we are plunged into a Nabokovian hall of mirrors in which it is hard to know whom or what to believe. Is this a haunting story of doomed love, a manipulative account of pitiful self-delusion, or, as the state has charged, a criminal assault of a victim who doesn’t have the agency or intelligence required of a willing participant in a love affair?Provocative and profound in its exploration of what makes us human, this is an extraordinary novel from one of our most acclaimed contemporary writers.