For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth—Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth. From the hidden bars and convenience stores of a radioactive wilderness to the sacred but reeking waters of India, Visit Sunny Chernobyl fuses immersive first-person reporting with satire and analysis, making the case that it’s time to start appreciating our planet as it is—not as we wish it would be. Irreverent and reflective, the book is a love letter to our biosphere’s most tainted, most degraded ecosystems, and a measured consideration of what they mean for us. Equal parts travelogue, expose, environmental memoir, and faux guidebook, Blackwell careens through a rogue’s gallery of environmental disaster areas in search of the worst the world has to offer—and approaches a deeper understanding of what’s really happening to our planet in the process.Review"A wise, witty travel adventure that packs a punch -- and one of the most entertaining and informative books I've read in years. Visit Sunny Chernobyl is a joy to read and will make you think." --Dan Rather"Andrew Blackwell takes eco-tourism into a whole new space. Visit Sunny Chernobyl is a darkly comic romp." --Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe."Entertaining, appealing, and thoughtful travelogue covers some of the world's most befouled spots with lively, agile wit... The book...offers an astute critique of how visions of blighted spots create an either/or vision of how to care for the environment and live in the world." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)"We've got lessons to learn from disaster sites. Thankfully, Visit Sunny Chernobyl means we don't have to learn them first-hand. Cancel your holiday to Chernobyl: Pick up this brilliant book!" --The Yes Men"Avoids the trendy tropes of 'ecotourism' in favor of the infinitely more interesting world of eco-disaster tourism... Blackwell is a smart and often funny writer, who has produced a complex portrait in a genre that typically avoids complexity in favor of outrage." --Wall Street Journal"Andrew Blackwell is a wonderful tour guide to the least wonderful places on earth. His book is a riveting toxic adventure. But more than just entertaining, the book will teach you a lot about the environment and the future of our increasingly polluted world." -- A.J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically "With a touch of wry wit and a reporter's keen eye, Andrew Blackwell plays tourist in the centers of environmental destruction and finds sardonic entertainment alongside tragedy. His meticulous observations will make you laugh and weep, and you will get an important education along the way." –David K. Shipler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Rights at Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America**"I'm a contrarian traveler. I don't obey any airport signs. I love the off season. And, when someone says to avoid a certain place, and almost every time the U.S. State Department issues a travel warning, that destination immediately becomes attractive to me. Visit Sunny Chernobyl is my new favorite guidebook to some places I admit to have visited. As a journalist, as well as a traveler, I consider this is an essential read. It is a very funny -- and very disturbing look at some parts of our world that need to be acknowledged before we take our next trip anywhere else." -- Peter Greenberg, Travel Editor for CBS News"Humor and dry wit lighten a travelogue of the most polluted and ravaged places in the world...With great verve, and without sounding preachy, he exposes the essence and interconnectedness of these environmental problems." -- Starred Kirkus Review "In 'Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places,' Blackwell avoids the trendy tropes of "ecotourism" in favor of the infinitely more interesting world of eco-disaster tourism...[Visit Sunny Chernobyl] is a nuanced understanding of environmental degradation and its affects on those living in contaminated areas...[Blackwell] offers a diligently evenhanded perspective...Blackwell is a smart and often funny writer, who has produced a complex portrait in a genre that typically avoids complexity in favor of outrage." -- The Wall Street Journal"In this lively tour of smog-shrouded cities, clear-cut forests, and the radioactive zone around a failed Soviet reactor, a witty journalist ponders the appeal of ruins and a consumer society’s conflicted approach to environmental woes." -- The Times-Picayune"Entertaining, appealing, and thoughtful travelogue covers some of the world's most befouled spots with lively, agile wit... The book...offers an astute critique of how visions of blighted spots create an either/or vision of how to care for the environment and live in the world." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Devastatingly hip and brutally relevant." -- Booklist, Starred Review"Visit Sunny Chernobyl is hard to categorize--part travelogue, part memoir, part environmental exposé--but it is not hard to praise. It's wonderfully engaging, extremely readable and, yes, remarkably informative...An engagingly honest reflection on travel to some of the world's worst environments by a guide with considerable knowledge to share."-- Roni K. Devlin, owner of Literary Life Bookstore & More"Ghastliness permeates Visit Sunny Chernobyl...[Blackwell] presents vivid descriptions of these wretched places, along with both their polluters and the crusaders who are trying—usually without success—to clean them up" -- The New York TimesAbout the AuthorAndrew Blackwell is a journalist and filmmaker living in New York City. He is a 2011 fellow in nonfiction literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Views: 36
A compelling memoir about trying to live meaningfully with illness and triumph beyond it, by breast cancer survivor Alana Somerville, a teacher and mother of two young children.I looked at all the sick people around me. Was I going to be like them? Was that already me? Did I suddenly have a time stamp on my life? Would I make it out of this alive? Alana Somerville—wife, teacher and mother of two small children—was thirty-three years old when she was diagnosed with stage-two, triple-negative breast cancer. The diagnosis changed her world and the relationships she had with everyone around her. Suddenly she was faced with endless medical appointments, multiple surgeries and procedures, the challenges of chemotherapy, and all the decisions involved in her treatment. She also had to deal with the trauma of realizing that her support network—sometimes even her closest friends—could struggle with how to help or even how to react to her... Views: 36
The Best of Best Lesbian Erotica offers the steamiest collection in the series to date, collecting the hottest, and most thought-provoking lesbian sex writing available. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Heather Lewis, Pat Califia, and Cecilia Tan. Views: 36
Frozen in Time is a gripping true story of survival, bravery, and honor in the vast Arctic wilderness during World War II, from the author of New York Times bestseller Lost in Shangri-La.On November 5, 1942, a US cargo plane slammed into the Greenland Ice Cap. Four days later, the B-17 assigned to the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on board survived, and the US military launched a daring rescue operation. But after picking up one man, the Grumman Duck amphibious plane flew into a severe storm and vanished.Frozen in Time tells the story of these crashes and the fate of the survivors, bringing vividly to life their battle to endure 148 days of the brutal Arctic winter, until an expedition headed by famed Arctic explorer Bernt Balchen brought them to safety. Mitchell Zuckoff takes the reader deep into the most hostile environment on earth, through... Views: 36
"There will always persist in my mind the sound of dead leaves crunching under my feet and that wisp of warm air that caressed my face like invisible hands. I walked a few steps and simply fell to the ground without life”.
This may well be the end of a novel, but on Despair Avenue, it is only the beginning. With his death, the protagonist is trapped in a kind of threshold, somewhere between alive and dead. His journey takes him to his old place of residence and to meet again with the one who was once his family. It will then be when she understands how much she has changed and the grave danger that lies ahead. Views: 36
A Dozen or So Years after the Fall of Astandalas
Magic is out of fashion.
Good manners never are.
Jemis Greenwing returned from university with a broken heart, a bad cold, and no prospects beyond a problematic inheritance and a job at the local bookstore.
Ragnor Bella is a placid little market town on the road to nowhere, where Jemis’ family affairs have always been the main source of gossip. He is determined to keep his head down under the cover of his new employer’s devastating mastery of social etiquette, but falls to the temptation of resuming his friendship with Mr. Dart of Dartington—land agent to his older brother the squire and beloved local daredevil—who is delighted to have Jemis’ company for what is, he assures him, only a very small adventure. Ragnor Bella is known as the dullest town in the whole continent, after all.
Jemis expected the cut direct. The secret societies, criminal gangs, and cult to the old gods come as a complete surprise.
Book One of Greenwing & Dart, fantasies of manners—and mischief. Views: 36
The astonishing story of a brave little girl from Afghanistan who not only survived horrific disfiguring burns but was given a second chance at life.Tiny Dancer is the amazing true story of Zubaida Hasan, a nine-year-old girl from the remote deserts of Afghanistan who, in the summer of 2001, accidentally fell into a kerosene fire while heating water for a bath. Though she was horribly mutilated, her father refused to give up and exhaustively sought help to save his child.When an American Green Beret soldier by chance sees Zubaida and her father on the street, he decides he must get involved. With assistance from many members of the U.S. military, little Zubaida is given a second chance at life. She is flown to Los Angeles to begin a two-year journey through a series of surgeries performed by famed burn surgeon Dr. Peter Grossman. He and his wife, Rebecca, eventually take the child into their own home. This is a heartfelt and inspiring story of incredible courage equally matched... Views: 36
Andrew Smart wants you to sit and do nothing much more often – and he has the science to explain why.At every turn we're pushed to do more, faster and more efficiently: that drumbeat resounds throughout our wage-slave society. Multitasking is not only a virtue, it's a necessity. Books such as Getting Things Done, The One Minute Manager, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People regularly top the bestseller lists, and have spawned a considerable industry.But Andrew Smart argues that slackers may have the last laugh. The latest neuroscience shows that the "culture of effectiveness" is not only ineffective, it can be harmful to your well-being. He makes a compelling case – backed by science – that filling life with activity at work and at home actually hurts your brain.A survivor of corporate-mandated "Six Sigma" training to improve efficiency, Smart has channeled a self-described "loathing" of the time-management industry into a witty, informative and... Views: 35
