Showing results by narrator "Matthew Josdal" in All Categories

Spanning four decades of dramatic advances in astronomy and planetary science, this book tells the story of eleven iconic exploratory missions and how they have fundamentally transformed our scientific and cultural perspectives on the universe and our place in it

Join a ragtag group of misfits from Dawson City as they scrap to become the 1905 Stanley Cup champions and cement hockey as Canada's national pastime.

"Making your love manifest, transforming your spirit, good heart, and able hands into food is a great undertaking,” writes renowned chef and Zen priest Edward Espe Brown, “one that will nourish you in the doing, in the offering, and in the eating.” With No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice, Brown beautifully blends expert cooking advice with thoughtful reflections on meaning, joy, and life itself. 

NATIONAL BESTSELLER For fans of The Pitt, a look at life on the front line in one of Canada’s busiest ERs The Casino Shift is an hour-by-hour account of what a Canadian emergency room is like in these turbulent times when ER staff must be prepared to see, diagnose, and treat any condition...

In June of 1968, Irene Izak, a young French teacher from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was pulling an all-nighter on the road toward the promise of a new life in Quebec. The last time she was seen alive was at 2:09 a.m. by a toll collector at Thousand Island Bridge, who claimed Irene was visibly afraid. Less than a half-hour later, Irene was found bludgeoned to death in a ravine bordering DeWolf Point State Park. There were no signs of robbery or sexual assault. For reasons unknown, Irene had been compelled to pull off the interstate and abandon her car, only to be brutally murdered.

For history buffs, travelers, and scholars alike, an indispensable behind-the-scenes guide to the great cathedrals of Paris.

 Based on three case studies from the Middle East, The Land beyond the Border advances an innovative theoretical framework for the study of state expansions and state contractions. 

Social psychologist Peter T. Coleman explores how conflict resolution and complexity science provide guidance for dealing with seemingly intractable political differences. Deploying the concept of attractors in dynamical systems, he explains why we are stuck in this rut as well as the unexpected ways that deeply rooted oppositions can and do change. 

On a frigid February evening in 1805, Amos Babcock brutally murdered Mercy Hall. Believing that he was being instructed by God, Babcock stabbed and disemboweled his own sister before dumping her lifeless body in a rural New Brunswick snowbank. This is the tragic and fascinating story of how isolation, duplicity, and religious mania turned impoverished, hardworking people violent, leading to a murder and an execution.

A mother and son attempt to make their way across a desert. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

A family takes in a tarantula as one of their own suffers from cancer. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

An eye-opening account of how Congress today really works - and doesn’t - that follows the dramatic journey of the sweeping financial reform bill enacted in response to the Great Crash of 2008. The founding fathers expected Congress to be the most important branch of government and gave it the most power. When Congress is broken - as its justifiably dismal approval ratings suggest - so is our democracy.

Our health care system is crippled by desperate efforts to prevent the inevitable. A third of the national Medicare budget - nearly $175 billion - is spent on the final year of life, and a third of that amount on the final month, often on expensive (and futile) treatments. Such efforts betray a fundamental flaw in how we think about healthcare: we squander resources on hopeless situations, instead of using them to actually improve health.

In a moment of madness, Jeremy Holland's parents were killed by a gunman in a Seattle mall. Now he faces a new life with his uncle Ed, a man with a vastly different lifestyle from the one Jeremy is used to. As he sits on the train hurtling toward Chicago, he can barely believe the terrible truth. He has no mother, no father, no home. Suddenly the impossible happens - again - as the train crashes in a blaze of fire, twisted metal, and screaming people. Jeremy staggers off, wandering aimlessly. He finds a deserted cabin in the woods, which seems to be just waiting for him.

In Trust in a Polarized Age, political philosopher Kevin Vallier offers a powerful counter-narrative to the prevailing sense of hopelessness that dogs the American political landscape. In an unapologetic defense of liberalism that synthesizes political philosophy and empirical trust research, Vallier restores faith in our power to reduce polarization and rebuild social and political trust.  

Are videogames bad for us? It's the question on everyone's mind, given teenagers' captive attention to videogames and the media's tendency to scapegoat them. It's also - if you ask clinical psychologist Alexander Kriss - the wrong question. In his therapy office, Kriss looks at videogames as a window into the mind. Is his patient Liz really "addicted" to Candy Crush - or is she evading a deeper problem? And when Jack immerses himself in Mass Effect, is he eroding his social skills - or honing them via relationship - building gameplay?

The American dream of equal opportunity is in peril. America's economic inequality is shocking, poverty threatens to become a heritable condition, and our healthcare system is crumbling despite ever increasing costs. In this thought-provoking book, Edward D. Kleinbard demonstrates how the failure to acknowledge the force of brute luck in our material lives exacerbates these crises leading to warped policy choices that impede genuine equality of opportunity for many Americans.

Tortured by nightmares about the teens who roughed him up, Steve Mariotti sought counseling. When his therapist suggested that he face his fears, Mariotti closed his small import-export business and became a teacher at the city's most notorious public school - Boys and Girls High in Bed-Stuy. Although his nightmares promptly ceased, Mariotti's out-of-control students rapidly drove him to despair. One day, Mariotti stepped out of the classroom so his students wouldn't see him cry.

The Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, Canada, is about as close to urban hell as you can get in the Western Hemisphere. Yet in this cauldron of drugs, shattered dreams, and extreme violence, Tom Bauer and his girlfriend Paulie - both ex-junkies and parents of baby Melody - are trying to make a life for themselves.