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Tree Thieves

Tree Thieves

Bourgon, Lyndsie
$27.00
A gripping investigation of the billion-dollar timber black market "and a fascinating examination of the deep and troubled relationship between people and forests" (Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts)

There's a strong chance that chair you are sitting on was made from stolen lumber. In Tree Thieves, Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the illegal timber market. As she traces three timber poaching cases, she introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels, and indigenous communities along the way.

Old-growth trees are invaluable and irreplaceable for both humans and wildlife, and are the oldest living things on earth. But the morality of tree poaching is not as simple as we might think: stealing trees is a form of deeply rooted protest, and a side effect of environmental preservation and protection that doesn't include communities that have been uprooted or marginalized when park boundaries are drawn. As Bourgon discovers, failing to include working class and rural communities in the preservation of these awe-inducing ecosystems can lead to catastrophic results.

Featuring excellent investigative reporting, fascinating characters, logging history, political analysis, and cutting-edge tree science, Tree Thieves takes readers on a thrilling journey into the intrigue, crime, and incredible complexity sheltered under the forest canopy.

Stuff They Don't Want You to Know

Stuff They Don't Want You to Know

Bowlin, Ben
$29.99

"Interesting...Bowlin's calmly rational approach to the subject of conspiracy theories shows the importance of logic and evidence."--Booklist

"A page-turning book to give to someone who believes in pizza pedophilia or that the Illuminati rule the world."--Kirkus Reviews

The co-hosts of the hit podcast Stuff They Don't Want You to Know, Ben Bowlin, Matthew Frederick, & Noel Brown, discern conspiracy fact from fiction in this sharp, humorous, compulsively readable, and gorgeously illustrated book.

In times of chaos and uncertainty, when trust is low and economic disparity is high, when political institutions are crumbling and cultural animosities are building, conspiracy theories find fertile ground. Many are wild, most are untrue, a few are hard to ignore, but all of them share one vital trait: there's a seed of truth at their center. That seed carries the sordid, conspiracy-riddled history of our institutions and corporations woven into its DNA.

Ben Bowlin, Matt Frederick, and Noel Brown host the popular iHeart Media podcast, Stuff They Don't Want You To Know. They are experts at exploring, explaining, and interrogating today's emergent conspiracies--from chem trails and biological testing to the secrets of lobbying and the indisputable evidence of UFOs.

Written in a smart, witty, and conversational style, elevated with amazing illustrations, Stuff They Don't Want You to Know is a vital book in understanding the nature of conspiracy and using truth as a powerful weapon against ignorance, misinformation, and lies.

Cherished Belonging

Cherished Belonging

Boyle, Gregory
$30.00
At a time when society is more fractured than ever before, beloved Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle invites us to see the world through a new lens of connection and build the loving community that we long to live in--a perfect message for readers of Anne Lamott, Mary Oliver, and Richard Rohr.

Over the past thirty years, Gregory Boyle has transformed thousands of lives through his work as the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention program in the world. The program runs on two unwavering principles: (1) Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions) and (2) we belong to each other (no exceptions).

Boyle believes that these two ideas allow all of us to cultivate a new way of seeing. Every community wants to be a safe place, where people are seen, and then are cherished. By remembering that we belong to each other, we find our way out of chaos and its dispiriting tribalism. Pooka, a former gang member who now oversees the program's housing division, puts it plainly: "Here, love is our lens. It's how we see things."

In Cherished Belonging, Boyle calls back to Christianity's origins as a subversive spiritual movement of equality, emancipation, and peace. Early Christianity was a way of life--not a set of beliefs. Boyle's vision of community isn't just a space for an individual to heal, but for people to join together and heal each other in a new collective living, a world dedicated to kindness as a constant and radical act of defiance. "The answer to every question is, indeed, compassion," Boyle exhorts. He calls us to cherish and nurture the connections that are all around us and live with radical kindness.

Sidecountry

Sidecountry

Branch, John
$18.95

New York Times reporter John Branch's riveting, humane pieces about ordinary people doing extraordinary things at the edges of the sporting world have won nearly every major journalism prize. Sidecountry gathers the best of Branch's work for the first time, featuring 20 of his favorites from the more than 2,000 pieces he has published in the paper.

Branch is renowned for covering the offbeat in the sporting world, from alligator hunting to wingsuit flying. Sidecountry features such classic Branch pieces, including "Snow Fall," about downhill skiers caught in an avalanche in Washington state, and "Dawn Wall," about rock climbers trying to scale Yosemite's famed El Capitan. In other articles, Branch introduces people whose dedication and decency transcend their sporting lives, including a revered football coach rebuilding his tornado-devastated town in Iowa and a girls' basketball team in Tennessee that plays on despite never winning a game. The book culminates with his moving personal pieces, including "Children of the Cube," about the surprising drama of Rubik's Cube competitions as seen through the eyes of Branch's own sports-hating son, and "The Girl in the No. 8 Jersey," about a mother killed in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting whose daughter happens to play on Branch's daughter's soccer team.

John Branch has been hailed for writing "American portraiture at its best" (Susan Orlean) and for covering sports "the way Lyle Lovett writes country music--a fresh turn on a time-honored pleasure" (Nicholas Dawidoff). Sidecountry is the work of a master reporter at the top of his game.

Have You Eaten Grandma?

Have You Eaten Grandma?

Brandreth, Gyles
$19.99
For anyone who wants to make fewer (not less) grammar mistakes, this "passionate, enlightening, and easily navigable manual is certainly the right book at the right time" (Publishers Weekly)--reminiscent of the New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Our language is changing, literary levels are declining, and our grasp of grammar is at a crisis point. From commas to colons, apostrophes to adverbs, there are countless ways we can make mistakes when writing or speaking. But do not despair! Great Britain's most popular grammar guru has created the ultimate modern manual for English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

In this "irreverent and conversational" (Booklist) guide to proper punctuation and so much more, Gyles Brandreth explores the linguistic horrors of our times, tells us what we've been doing wrong, and shows us how to can get it right every time. Covering everything from dangling participles to transitive verbs, from age-old conundrums like "lay" vs. "lie," to the confounding influences of social media on our everyday language, Have You Eaten Grandma? is an endlessly useful and entertaining resource for all.

Malcolm X Speaks

Malcolm X Speaks

Breitman, George
$18.00
"Policies change, and programs change, according to time.
But objective never changes. You might change your method of achieving the
objective, but the objective never changes. Our objective is complete freedom, complete
justice, complete equality, by any means necessary."--Malcolm X, December 20,
1964
Malcolm X Speaks collects the major late speeches of one of the most important leaders of our time, a man who was not only a champion of Black liberation and empowerment but also one of the greatest orators of the twentieth century. This long-celebrated book of Malcolm X's speeches from 1963 to 1965 is a testament to the enduring power of his extraordinary words. These speeches show his changing attitudes to the Nation of Islam, questions of segregation and integration, and the development of productive alliances with other groups in the battle for liberation. Now reissued with an introduction by the National Book Award-winning author of How to Be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning Ibram X. Kendi, this edition of Malcolm X Speaks is a more-essential-than-ever volume in the literature of Black power.


Jellyfish Age Backwards

Jellyfish Age Backwards

Brendborg, Nicklas
$29.00

This eye-opening book offers a "clear and captivating" (Dr. Kris Verburgh​)scientific deep dive into how plants and animals have already unlocked the secrets to immortality-and the lessons they hold for us all.

Recent advances in medicine and technology have expanded our understanding of aging across the animal kingdom, and our own timeless quest for the fountain of youth. Yet, despite modern humans living longer today than ever before, the public's understanding of what is possible is limited to our species--until now. In this spunky, effervescent debut, the key to immortality is revealed to be a superpower within reach. With mind-bending stories from the natural world and our own, Jellyfish Age Backwards reveals lifespans we cannot imagine and physiological gifts that feel closer to magic than reality:

  • There is a Greenland shark that was 286 years old when the Titanic sank, and is currently 390, making it older than the United States. Scientists predict it will live for another 100 years.
  • Trees and lobsters don't "age" in the way we know it. They simply get bigger and bigger.
  • There are forms of radiation that have been known to actually increase the lifespans of certain species, from tortoises to naked mole-rats.
  • There's a species of jellyfish, the size of a fingernail, that can age forwards, then, when threatened, age backwards and begin the process all over again.
  • Mixing cutting-edge research and stories from habitats all around the world, molecular biologist Nicklas Brendborg explores extended life cycles in all its varieties. Along the way, we meet a man who fasted for over a year; a woman who edited her own DNA; redwoods that survive thousands of years; and in the soil of Easter Island, the key to eternal youth. Jellyfish Age Backwards is a love letter to the immense power of nature, and what the immortal lives of many of earth's animals and plants can teach us about the secrets to longevity.

    Shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize

    A New York Times Editor's Choice Pick

    A Sunday Times (UK) Best Book of the Year

    Nora says: What is aging? Is it one or many biological processes? Why do certain organisms age quickly and others slowly? Can aging be prevented? What does each aging process tell us about disease and disease prevention?  Jellyfish Age Backwards is an enlightening and entertaining look at what happens to all living beings over time. Brendborg writes clearly for the layman without condescension. Great for the armchair biologist!

    We Dissent

    We Dissent

    Breyer, Stephen
    $16.99
    The full text of one of the most radical and controversial Supreme Court decisions in American history, highlighting the galvanizing dissent by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan ...

    Dobbs v Jackson, the landmark decision to overthrow the rights first granted to women in the Roe v Wade decision fifty years ago, is the first U.S. Supreme Court decision in American history to actually take away from citizens a Constitutionally-protected right. As such it may be the most consequential Court ruling ever.

    Compounding matters, the decision opened the door to the overthrow of still further rights -- such as same-sex marriage, for example, or equal rights for trans people.

    Nowhere is the danger of this decision made more clear than in the sobering yet electrifying dissent filed by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. That dissent is highlighted in this edition, which includes the entire decision, to let readers decide for themselves, but forefronts the stirring and eloquently reasoned dissent.

    That eloquence will surely inspire, inform, and fuel the increasingly impassioned debate during the tumultuous campaign season of the upcoming mid-term elections -- and beyond.

    Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

    Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

    Bridle, James
    $20.00

    Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle's Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence--plant, animal, human, artificial--and how they transform our understanding of humans' place in the cosmos.

    What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings--beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in "artificial" intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us.

    At the same time, we're only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we've failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others--the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us--are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we've built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world?

    The artist and maverick thinker James Bridle draws on biology and physics, computation, literature, art, and philosophy to answer these unsettling questions. Startling and bold, Ways of Being explores the fascinating, strange, and multitudinous forms of knowing, doing, and being that make up the world, and that are essential for our survival.

    Includes illustrations

    Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

    Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

    Bridle, James
    $30.00

    Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle's Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence--plant, animal, human, artificial--and how they transform our understanding of humans' place in the cosmos.

    What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings-- beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in "artificial" intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us.

    At the same time, we're only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we've failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others--the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us--are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we've built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world?

    The artist and maverick thinker James Bridle draws on biology and physics, computation, literature, art, and philosophy to answer these unsettling questions. Startling and bold, Ways of Being explores the fascinating, strange, and multitudinous forms of knowing, doing, and being that make up the world, and that are essential for our survival.

    Includes illustrations

    James says: An artistic benevolent vision of how being aware of all the forms of intelligence on Earth can be optimistically engineered into our psyche, and how A.I. can serve as a beneficial tool for all.