Books
fromThe Atlantic
1 day agoUnconventional Novels About Conventional People
Aging revolutionaries and conformists share parallel narratives of disillusionment and the loss of youthful dreams in recent literature.
My earliest independent reading memory is The Story of Ferdinand by Leaf and Lawson. I loved that bull! My favourite book growing up Big books gave me the whirlies so it took a while for them to start landing.
Lorena Bradford started monthly tours in American Sign Language, established a program for individuals with memory loss, and brought in medical students to learn soft skills to apply in their caregiving. 'I was a sub-department of one,' she joked to writer Emma Cieslik, who spoke with Bradford over Zoom and at the NGA about her own circuitous path into the profession, and the future of the field of museum accessibility.
Enrigue's 'penchant for shooting the facts of history through the prism of the absurd' makes him singular-but it also puts him firmly in a long literary tradition. The book 'distills a byzantine swirl of historical events through the lives of a handful of very colorful characters,' intertwining several real and invented incidents with major moments in the Apache Wars, a series of skirmishes involving Native Americans, the U.S., and Mexico across the Southwest borderlands.
Some things are out of our control. But what is in our control, is our ability to support one another. And ensure that we do not allow fear to keep us from experiencing something that could be truly special.
Imperial Roman ethnography was a gift the Romans made for themselves, because it embraced concepts with which they could address the great cultural diversity of their world. It was a gift that came from the conquerors, reflecting their supposition of preeminence. At the same time, Roman ethnography was a somewhat less welcome present for the many peoples who found themselves trapped in Rome's vision, needing to find a place within it that made sense to Roman demands.
In this book of moons, I am writing for people for whom the medieval world and its literatures and arts may be unfamiliar. I hope that in telling the stories of medieval moons, I also introduce these readers to the wonderful, mesmerising realm of medieval texts and images. But I also hope that this book may be useful to those with greater familiarity with medieval languages, literatures, and arts.
Looking to the Middle Ages for answers to the perennial puzzles of life can seem quaint, even artificial, a long reach across centuries marked by violence, hierarchy, and exclusion. And yet medieval culture offers a way of thinking about love that still speaks to the present. If love is most urgently tested in moments of strain and upheaval, then it is in those moments - where care is stressed or obscured - that its meaning comes most clearly into view.
At first sight, Winslow Homer's " The Brush Harrow," which depicts two young boys, a horse, and a harrow against an arid landscape, evokes a feeling of somber isolation - but it's hard to pinpoint why. During a talk by curator Horace D. Ballard at the Harvard Art Museums on Jan. 29, visitors learned that Homer painted the scene in 1865, as the Civil War was ending, making the emotional underpinnings of the work clearer.
Research has linked reading for pleasure in childhood to a host of positive educational and socioeconomic outcomes. But now 14 years after the Department for Education, in a more innocent time, commissioned a chunky report on the matter—reading books for pleasure is an activity in crisis. The culprit usually blamed for this falling-off is the smartphone and its many short-term distractions; the mere presence of a smartphone in the room, recent research suggests, has an impact on our ability to concentrate.
In this volume, the authors aim to provide a truly global overview of the 14 century, with each region given approximately the same space. It is obviously impossible to cover every event in every country of the world in a single volume, just as you would not be able to visit every city in every country if you traveled around the world for a year.
This open-access book brings together more than thirty essays on languages and the ways they develop, interact, and influence one another. Its main focus is the Middle East, where Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic long existed side by side and often overlapped in everyday use, scholarship, and culture. In line with Geoffrey (Khan)'s commitment to the maximally accessible dissemination of research, this Festschrift has been published in both open-access digital editions and affordable printed formats.
When I first heard of Heated Rivalry, I didn't think much about it. The words Canadian ice-hockey TV series slid into my brain and slipped right back out. But a week later, approximately everyone I'd ever met wanted to talk about it. People kept telling me that it was fun, sweet, and addicting. Most of all, they emphasized that it was really smutty. Every recommendation seemed to come with a warning to not watch with my parents.
An excavation in central London has uncovered the remains of a boys school complete with artifacts from the students' schoolwork and their playtime. The objects include a slate tablet used as an erasable notebook to practice handwriting, a slate pencil and several ceramic alleys marbles made of decorated white ceramic from the Victorian era. Artifacts related to children's lives are less frequently found than ones relating to adults, so these objects give us a special glimpse into the lives of schoolboys.
For those unfamiliar with the beloved heroine, Samantha is one of the first three historical characters introduced by American Girl in 1986. Samantha, Swedish immigrant Kirsten and WWII homefront heroine Molly demonstrated courage, compassion and resilience. Along with an 18-inch doll, each 9-year-old character was featured in a series of easy chapter books; kids could follow each fictional story as well as the historical context surrounding it.
Subsequently, runaway children turned the valley into a fortress, surviving on food they could catch or grow, with occasional forays into the towns below. Riley has heard the rumours, but it is only when she sees a green-clad boy or is it a girl? hovering outside her bedroom window offering directions on how to find Nowhere that she realises this might be her chance to escape and save her little brother from their sadistic guardian.
While working on a graduate school paper on the mystical powers of coral, gemologist Anna Rasche ventured deep into the archives of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum's library. Coral is the most powerful material to ward off the evil eye-a belief Italians have held since ancient times. Romans often gifted newborns coral amulets to prevent sickness and bad luck.