Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay
In this vivid and captivating journey through the colors of
an artist’s palette, Victoria Finlay takes us on an enthralling adventure
around the world and through the ages, illuminating how the colors we choose to
value have determined the history of culture itself.
How did the most precious color blue travel all the way from
remote lapis mines in Afghanistan to Michelangelo’s brush? What is the
connection between brown paint and ancient Egyptian mummies? Why did Robin Hood
wear Lincoln green? In Color, Finlay explores the physical materials that color
our world, such as precious minerals and insect blood, as well as the social
and political meanings that color has carried through time.
Roman emperors used to wear togas dyed with a purple color
that was made from an odorous Lebanese shellfish–which probably meant their
scent preceded them. In the eighteenth century, black dye was called logwood
and grew along the Spanish Main. Some of the first indigo plantations were
started in America, amazingly enough, by a seventeen-year-old girl named Eliza.
And the popular van Gogh painting White Roses at Washington’s National Gallery
had to be renamed after a researcher discovered that the flowers were
originally done in a pink paint that had faded nearly a century ago. Color is
full of extraordinary people, events, and anecdotes–painted all the more
dazzling by Finlay’s engaging style.
Embark upon a thrilling adventure with this intrepid
journalist as she travels on a donkey along ancient silk trade routes; with the
Phoenicians sailing the Mediterranean in search of a special purple shell that
garners wealth, sustenance, and prestige; with modern Chilean farmers breeding
and bleeding insects for their viscous red blood. The colors that craft our
world have never looked so bright. -Amazon Description
Disney: The Mouse Betrayed by Peter Schweizer
"For more than seventy years, the Walt Disney Company
has been an icon of wholesome family entertainment. Now Disney is under attack
by family and religious organizations. Are the complaints hysterical
censorship, or has Disney really lost its way?" "Investigative
journalists Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer set out to find the answer.
Exclusive interviews with Disney employees, internal corporate documents, and
law enforcement records reveal a story of a great American institution
corrupted by greed and perverted by the lust for power - and even more bizarre
vices." "The Schweizers reveal: how Walt Disney put safety first, but
the current management allows Disney World to have an injury rate twice the
industry average - for money; how Disney became a partner in the nation's
largest pay-per-view pornography distributor; Disney World's rampant pedophile
and sexual abuser problem - and how the company prefers cover-ups to simple and
inexpensive solutions; the weird message Disney sends when employees are caught
peeping on - even filming - coworkers and guests in their dressing room; how
Disney thwarts the efforts of local law enforcement at its theme parks; and how
Disney licensees have been repeatedly charged with violating federal child
labor laws."--BOOK JACKET
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash
From Ron Rash, PEN / Faulkner Award finalist and New York
Times bestselling author of Serena, comes a new collection of unforgettable
stories set in Appalachia that focuses on the lives of those haunted by
violence and tenderness, hope and fear—spanning the Civil War to the present
day.
The darkness of Ron Rash’s work contrasts with its
unexpected sensitivity and stark beauty in a manner that could only be
accomplished by this master of the short story form.
Nothing Gold Can Stay includes 14 stories, including Rash’s
“The Trusty,” which first appeared in The New Yorker. - Amazon Description
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
In 1937 Shanghai—the Paris of Asia—twenty-one-year-old Pearl
Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Both are
beautiful, modern, and carefree—until the day their father tells them that he
has gambled away their wealth. To repay his debts, he must sell the girls as
wives to suitors who have traveled from Los Angeles to find Chinese brides. As
Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey
of a lifetime, from the Chinese countryside to the shores of America. Though
inseparable best friends, the sisters also harbor petty jealousies and
rivalries. Along the way they make terrible sacrifices, face impossible
choices, and confront a devastating, life-changing secret, but through it all
the two heroines of this astounding new novel hold fast to who they
are—Shanghai girls. -Amazon Description
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. He
lives alone, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and
now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. But
when a mysterious package appears at the bookstore, its unexpected arrival
gives Fikry the chance to make his life over--and see everything anew. - Amazon Description
The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block
Abel Haggard is an elderly hunchback who haunts the remnants
of his family’s farm in the encroaching shadow of the Dallas suburbs, adrift in
recollections of those he loved and lost long ago. Hundreds of miles to the
south, in Austin, Seth Waller is a teenage “Master of Nothingness”—a prime
specimen of that gangly breed of adolescent that vanishes in a puff of sarcasm
at the slightest threat of human contact. When his mother is diagnosed with a
rare disease, Seth sets out on a quest to find her lost relatives and uncover
the truth of her genetic history. Though neither knows of the other’s
existence, Abel and Seth are linked by a dual legacy: the disease that destroys
the memories of those they love, and the story of Isidora—a land without memory
where nothing is ever possessed, so nothing can be lost.
Blending myth, science, and dazzling storytelling, Stefan
Merrill Block’s extraordinary first novel illuminates the hard-learned truth
that only through the loss of what we consider precious can we understand the
value of what remains. - Amazon Description
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