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God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World
Cullen Murphy
2012
Exploring the Inquisition from its establishment in 1231 onwards, Murphy argues that not only did its offices survive into the twentieth century, its spirit lingers on in the modern world too.
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Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America
Cullen Murphy
2007
The rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds from the beginning of our Republic. Depending on who's doing the talking, the history of Rome serves either as a triumphal call to action, or a dire warming of imminent collapse. Esteemed editor and author Murphy ventures past the pundits' rhetoric to draw nuanced lessons about how we might avoid Rome's demise. Working on a canvas that extends far beyond the issue of an overstretched military, Murphy reveals a wide array of similarities between the two empires: the blinding, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of corruption; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic through various forms of "privatization." Most pressingly, he argues that we most resemble Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside--two things that are in our power to change.
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The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own
Cullen Murphy
1997
In the world that created the Bible, there were no female scholars and theologians, yet in the past four decades, owing to such stunning discoveries as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts, as well as advances in historical understanding and the rise of feminism, a generation of scholars has found new ways to interpret the Scriptures and the societies that created them -- exploring avenues traditionally ignored by male-dominated religious study. Surveying the new scholarship and the personalities of those who have created it, The Word According to Eve not only explores afresh the history of our religions but offers exciting new challenges to our sense of worship.
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Just Curious: Essays
Cullen Murphy
1995
Offering a new look at everyday things, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly considers a variety of topics ranging from tax courts to religion, archaeology to ventriloquism, in a collection of unpredictable, shrewd, and informative essays.
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The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History
Marysa Navarro, Gwendolyn Mink, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller, and Barbara Smith
1998
Contains articles on fashion and style, household workers, images of women, jazz and blues, maternity homes, Native American women, Phillis Wheatley, homes, picture brides, single women, and teaching.
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When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains
Ariana Neumann
2-4-2020
In 1941, the first Neumann family member was taken by the Nazis, arrested in German-occupied Czechoslovakia for bathing in a stretch of river forbidden to Jews. He was transported to Auschwitz. Eighteen days later his prisoner number was entered into the morgue book. Of thirty-four Neumann family members, twenty-five were murdered by the Nazis. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who, to escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight under the Gestapo's eyes. What Hans experienced was so unspeakable that, when he built an industrial empire in Venezuela, he couldn't bring himself to talk about it. All his daughter Ariana knew was that something terrible had happened. When Hans died, he left Ariana a small box filled with letters, diary entries, and other memorabilia. Ten years later, Ariana finally summoned the courage to have the letters translated, and she began reading. What she discovered launched her on a worldwide search that would deliver indelible portraits of a family loving, finding meaning, and trying to survive amid the worst that can be imagined. When Time Stopped is a powerful detective story and an epic family memoir, spanning nearly ninety years and crossing oceans. Neumann brings each relative to vivid life. In uncovering her father's story after all these years, she discovers nuance and depth to her own history and liberates poignant and thought-provoking truths about the threads of humanity that connect us all.
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The Committed
Viet Thanh Nguyen
3-2-2021
Follows the "man of two minds" as he comes to Paris as a refugee. There he and his blood brother Bon try to escape their pasts and prepare for their futures by turning their hands to capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing. No longer in physical danger, but still inwardly tortured by his re-education at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into a dominant culture, the Sympathizer is both charmed and disturbed by Paris. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals and politicians who frequent dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese "aunt," he finds not just stimulation for his mind but also customers for his merchandise-but the new life he is making has dangers he has not foreseen. Both literary thriller and brilliant novel of ideas, The Committed is a blistering portrayal of commitment and betrayal.
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The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
Viet Thanh Nguyen
2018
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers from around the world to explore and illuminate their experiences. Poignant and insightful, this collection of essays reveals moments of uncertainty, resilience int he face of trauma, and a reimagining of identity. The Displaced is a powerful look at what it means to be forced to leave home and find a place of refuge. -- Adapted from book jacket.
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The Refugees
Viet Thanh Nguyen
2017
The Refugees is a collection of stories written over a period of twenty years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family. Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration.
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The Refugees
Viet Thanh Nguyen
2017
"Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer was one of the most widely and highly praised novels of 2015, the winner not only of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but also the Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, the ALA Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Nguyen's next fiction book, The Refugees, is a collection of perfectly formed stories written over a period of twenty years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family. With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration. The second piece of fiction by a major new voice in American letters, The Refugees is a beautifully written and sharply observed book about the aspirations of those who leave one country for another, and the relationships and desires for self-fulfillment that define our lives"-- Provided by publisher
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Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
Viet Thanh Nguyen
2016
All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. Exploring how this troubled memory works in Vietnam, the United States, Laos, Cambodia, and South Korea, the book deals specifically with the Vietnam War and also war in general. He reveals how war is a part of our identity, as individuals and as citizens of nations armed to the teeth. Venturing through literature, film, monuments, memorials, museums, and landscapes of the Vietnam War, he argues that an alternative to nationalism and war exists in art, created by artists who adhere to no nation but the imagination.
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The Sympathizer: A Novel
Viet Thanh Nguyen
2015
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.
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Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America
Viet Thanh Nguyen
2002
Viet Nguyen argues that Asian American intellectuals need to examine their own assumptions about race, culture and politics, and makes his case through the example of literature.
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Chicken of the Sea
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Ellison Nguyen, Thi Bui, and Hien Bui-Stafford
11-26-2019
A band of intrepid chickens leave behind the boredom of farm life, joining the crew of the pirate ship Pitiless to seek fortune and glory on the high seas. Led by a grizzled captain into the territory of the Dog Knights, they soon learn what it means to be courageous, merciful, and not seasick quite so much of the time.
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Dad's Maybe Book
Tim O'Brien
2019
Best-selling author Tim O'Brien shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humor, and rewards of raising two sons
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July, July
Tim O'Brien
2002
Old friends share memories of the past, current regrets, and future plans as they gather on a July weekend for the thirtieth reunion of Darton Hall College's class of 1969.
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If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
Tim O'Brien
1999
O'Brien's searing memoir of his years as a soldier in Vietnam takes readers with him through the ghostly ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong.
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Tomcat in Love
Tim O'Brien
1998
Even as he plots revenge on his wife for abandoning him for another man Thomas Chippering, a professor of linguistics cannot free himself of his obsession with women. He makes a pass at a student who blackmails him into giving her good marks. A look at a womanizer.
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In the Lake of the Woods
Tim O'Brien
1994
John Wade, a senatorial candidate, is accused of participating in a massacre during the Vietnam War. Hounded by the press, he flees with his wife to a cottage and his wife disappears. Did she desert him, or did he kill her?
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The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
1991
A sequence of stories about the Vietnam War, this book also has the unity of a novel, with recurring characters and interwoven strands of plot and theme. It aims to summarize America's involvement in Vietnam, and her coming to terms with that experience in the years that followed.
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The Nuclear Age
Tim O'Brien
1985
At the age of forty-nine, William Cowling decides to dig a gigantic hole in his backyard in order to protect himself and his family from "the very real threat of nuclear annihilation that everyone evades and denies."
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Going after Cacciato: A Novel
Tim O'Brien
1978
In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris. In its memorable evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of battle, Going After Cacciato stands as much more than just a great war novel. Ultimately it's about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.
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Northern Lights
Tim O'Brien
1975
Set in the Arrowhead country of Minnesota, Paul and Harvey Perry act out the dreams of their dead father. Their rivalry spins out of control and ends in a final test of endurance and survival.
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Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum
Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner
2016
This is the story of two young people from completely different worlds: Kennedy Odede from Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, and Jessica Posner from Denver, Colorado. Kennedy foraged for food, lived on the street, and taught himself to read with old newspapers. When an American volunteer gave him the work of Mandela, Garvey, and King, teenaged Kennedy decided he was going to change his life and his community. He bought a soccer ball and started a youth empowerment group he called Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO). Then in 2007, Wesleyan undergraduate Jessica Posner spent a semester abroad in Kenya working with SHOFCO. Breaking all convention, she decided to live in Kibera with Kennedy, and they fell in love.Their connection persisted, and Jessica helped Kennedy to escape political violence and fulfill his lifelong dream of an education, at Wesleyan University.
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Dubliners
Tony O'Shea and Colm Tóibín
1990
A recording of a single year in Dublin which captures celebrations, sporting events and the lives of Dubliners. The book transcends social strata and explores the city's various communities.
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