Lost in the
Jungle
By Yossi Ghinsberg
Four travelers meet in
Bolivia and set off
into the heart of the Amazon rainforest, but what begins as a dream adventure
quickly deteriorates into a dangerous nightmare, and after weeks of wandering in
the dense undergrowth, the four backpackers split up into two groups.
But when a terrible rafting accident
separates him from his partner, Yossi is forced to survive for weeks alone
against one of the wildest backdrops on the planet. Stranded without a knife,
map, or survival training, he must improvise shelter and forage for wild fruit
to survive. As his feet begin to rot during raging storms, as he loses all sense
of direction, and as he begins to lose all hope, he wonders whether he will make
it out of the jungle alive. Lost in the Jungle is the story of friendship and
the teachings of nature, and a terrifying true account that you won t be able to
put down.
King Leopold's
Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa
By Adam Hochschild
In the 1880s, as the
European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the
vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo
River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the
Congo, he looted its rubber,
brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all
the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic
efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights
movement of the twentieth century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the
Archbishop of Canterbury participated. King Leopold's Ghost is the haunting
account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming,
and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains. It is also the deeply
moving portrait of those who fought Leopold: a brave handful of missionaries,
travelers, and young idealists who went to Africa for work or adventure and unexpectedly found
themselves witnesses to a holocaust. Adam Hochschild brings this largely untold
story alive with the wit and skill of a Barbara Tuchman. Like her, he knows that history
often provides a far richer cast of characters than any novelist could invent.
Chief among them is Edmund Morel, a young British shipping agent who went on to lead the
international crusade against Leopold. Another hero of this tale, the Irish
patriot Roger Casement, ended his life on a London gallows. Two courageous black Americans,
George Washington Williams and William Sheppard, risked much to bring evidence
of the Congo atrocities to the outside
world. Sailing into the middle of the story was a young Congo River steamboat officer named Joseph Conrad. And
looming above them all, the duplicitous billionaire King Leopold II. With great
power and compassion, King Leopold's Ghost will brand the tragedy of the
Congo--too long forgotten--onto the
conscience of the West.
The Firecracker
Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the
Environmental Movement
By Dan O’Neil
In 1958, Edward
Teller, father of the H-bomb, unveiled his plan to detonate six nuclear bombs
off the Alaskan coast to create a new harbor. However, the plan was blocked by a
handful of Eskimos and biologists who succeeded in preventing massive nuclear
devastation potentially far greater than that of the Chernobyl blast. The
Firecracker Boys is a story of the
U.S. government’s arrogance
and deception, and the brave people who fought against it-launching
America’s environmental movement. As
one of Alaska’s most prominent authors, Dan
O’Neill brings to these pages his love of Alaska’s landscape, his skill as a nature and
science writer, and his determination to expose one of the most shocking
chapters of the Nuclear Age.
The Children’s
Blizzard
By David Laskin
Thousands of
impoverished Northern European immigrants were promised that the prairie offered
"land, freedom, and hope." The disastrous blizzard of 1888 revealed that their
free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by
natural forces they neither understood nor controlled, and America's
heartland would never be the same. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages
of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and
more.
Ada BlackJack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic
By Jennifer Niven
From the author of The
Ice Master comes the remarkable true story of a young Inuit woman who survived
six months alone on a desolate, uninhabited Arctic island n September 1921, four
young men and Ada Blackjack, a
diminutive 25-year-old Eskimo woman, ventured deep into the Arctic in a secret
attempt to colonize desolate Wrangel Island for Great Britain. Two years
later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the
sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. This young, unskilled
woman-who had headed to the Arctic in search of money and a husband-conquered
the seemingly unconquerable north and survived all alone after her male
companions had perished. Following her triumphant return to civilization, the
international press proclaimed her the female Robinson Crusoe. But whatever stories the press turned out came from
the imaginations of reporters: Ada Blackjack refused to speak to anyone about her
horrific two years in the Arctic. Only on one
occasion-after charges were published falsely accusing her of causing the death
of one her companions-did she speak up for herself. Jennifer Niven has created
an absorbing, compelling history of this remarkable woman, taking full advantage
of the wealth of first-hand resources about Ada that exist, including her
never-before-seen diaries, the unpublished diaries from other primary
characters, and interviews with Ada's surviving son. Ada Blackjack is more than a rugged tale of a woman
battling the elements to survive in the frozen north-it is the story of a
hero.
The Worst Hard
Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust
Bowl
By Timothy Egan
The dust storms that
terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like
nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account
rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de
force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities
through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts
to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death
of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing
the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human
characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose
lives he opens up with urgency and respect” (New York
Times).
In an era that
promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is “arguably the
best nonfiction book yet” (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest
environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful
cautionary tale about the dangers of trifling with
nature.
Triangle: The
Fire That Changed America
By David Von Drehle
Triangle is a
poignantly detailed account of the 1911 disaster that horrified the country and
changed the course of twentieth-century politics and labor relations. On March
25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out
in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New
York’s Greenwich Village. Within
minutes it spread to consume the building’s upper three stories. Firemen who
arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders
simply weren’t tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate
workers jumped to their deaths. The final toll was 146 people—123 of them women.
It was the worst disaster in New York
City history. Triangle is a vibrant and immensely moving
account that Bob Woodward calls
“riveting history written with flare and
precision.”
The Window’s of
Heaven
By Ron Rozelle
Set in Galveston during the 1900 storm, the most devastating
natural disaster in the history of the United States, this sweeping novel
follows the fates of several richly drawn characters. It is the story of Sal,
the little girl who is wise beyond her years and who holds out as much hope for
the world as she does for her father, the ruined son of a respected father. It
is the story of Sister Zilphia, the nun who helps run the St. Mary's Orphanage.
The only thing separating the two long buildings of the orphanage is a fragile
line of sand dunes; the only thing separating Zilphia from the world is the
brittle faith that she has been sent there to consider. A faith that has never
been truly tested. Until now. And it is the story of Galveston herself, the grand old lady of the Gulf Coast, with her harbor filled with ships
from the world over; her Victorian homes and her brothels and her grand
pavilions set in their own parks; and her stately mansions along Broadway, the highest ground on the island, at eight
feet above sea level. All must face their darkest night now, as nature hurls the
worst she can muster at the narrow strip of sand and salt grass that is doomed
to become, for a time, part of the ocean floor. This is the story of heroes and
villains, of courage and sacrifice and, most of all, of people trying
desperately to survive. And it is the story of an era now gone, of splendor and
injustice, filled with the simple joy of living. RON ROZELLE is the author of
Into That Good Night (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), which was a finalist for the PEN
American West Creative Nonfiction Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters Carr
P. Collins Award. He lives in Lake
Jackson with his wife Karen and their daughters and
teaches creative writing and English.
My
Lobotomy
By Howard Dully
At twelve, Howard
Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and
messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point, and
perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of
the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric
transorbital—or ice pick—lobotomy.
Abandoned by his
family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental
institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn’t
until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together.
But even as he began to live the
“normal” life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question:
Why?
“October 8, 1960. I
gather that Mrs. Dully is perpetually talking, admonishing, correcting, and
getting worked up into a spasm, whereas her husband is impatient, explosive,
rather brutal, won’t let the boy speak for himself, and calls him numbskull,
dimwit, and other uncomplimentary names.”
There were only three
people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure;
Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor’s
attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn’t
intervened on his son’s behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable
and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers.
“December 3, 1960. Mr.
and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on. I suggested
[they] not tell Howard anything about it.”
Through his research,
Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of
Freeman’s sons about his father’s controversial life’s work, and confronted
Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor’s files are
stored, he finally came face to face with the
truth.
Revealing what
happened to a child no one—not his father, not the medical community, not the
state—was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the
history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful
and moving chronicle of the life of one man. Without reticence, Howard Dully
shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his
struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his
redemption.
Rats:
Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted
Inhabitants
By Robert Sullivan
Love them or loathe
them, rats are here to stay-they are city dwellers as much as (or more than) we
are, surviving on the effluvia of our society. In Rats, the critically acclaimed
bestseller, Robert Sullivan spends a year investigating a rat-infested alley
just a few blocks away from Wall Street. Sullivan gets to know not just the
beast but its friends and foes: the exterminators, the sanitation workers, the
agitators and activists who have played their part in the centuries-old war
between human city dweller and wild city rat. Sullivan looks deep into the
largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses-its herds-of-rats-like
mob. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats
earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature
writing.
The Mummy
Congress
By Heather Pringle
Perhaps the most
eccentric of all scientific meetings, the World Congress on Mummy Studies brings
together mummy experts from all over the globe and airs their latest findings.
Who are these scientists, and what draws them to this morbid yet captivating
field The Mummy Congress, written by acclaimed science journalist Heather
Pringle, examines not just the world of mummies, but also the people obsessed
with them.
Locust
By Jeffrey Lockwood
In 1876, the U.S.
Congress declared the locust the single greatest impediment to the settlement of
the country between Mississippi and the
Rocky Mountains.” Throughout the nineteenth
century, swarms of locusts regularly swept across the American continent,
turning noon into dusk, devastating farm communities, and bringing trains to a
halt. The outbreaks subsided in the 1890s, and then, suddenly—and
mysteriously—the Rocky Mountain locust vanished. A century later,
entomologist Jeffrey Lockwood vowed to discover why.Locust is the story of how one insect
shaped the history of the western United States. A compelling personal
narrative drawing on historical accounts and modern science, this beautifully
written book brings to life the cultural, economic, and political forces at work
in America in the late nineteenth
century, even as it solves one of the greatest extinction mysteries of our
time.
A Sense of the
World
By Jason Roberts
He was known simply as
the Blind Traveler -- a solitary,
sightless adventurer who, astonishingly, fought the slave trade in Af-rica,
survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in
Ceylon, and helped chart the
Australian outback. James Holman (1786-1857) became "one of the greatest wonders
of the world he so sagaciously explored," triumphing not only over blindness but
crippling pain, poverty, and the interference of well-meaning authorities (his
greatest feat, a circumnavigation of the globe, had to be launched in secret).
Once a celebrity, a bestselling author, and an inspiration to Charles Darwin and
Sir Richard Francis Burton, the
charismatic, witty Holman outlived his fame, dying in an obscurity that has
endured -- until now.
A Sense of the World
is a spellbinding and moving rediscovery of one of history's most epic lives.
Drawing on meticulous research, Jason Roberts ushers us into the Blind Traveler's uniquely vivid sensory realm, then
sweeps us away on an extraordinary journey across the known world during the Age
of Exploration. Rich with suspense, humor, international intrigue, and
unforgettable characters, this is a story to awaken our own senses of awe and
wonder
Blood River: a Journey of Africa’s Broken
Heart
By Tim Butcher
A
compulsively readable account of a journey to the Congo — a
country virtually inaccessible to the outside world — vividly told by a daring
and adventurous journalist.
Ever
since Stanley first charted its mighty river in
the 1870s, the Congo has epitomized the dark and
turbulent history of a failed continent. However, its troubles only served to
increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of
recreating Stanley’s original expedition — but travelling
alone.
Despite
warnings Butcher spent years poring
over colonial-era maps and wooing rebel leaders before making his will and
venturing to the Congo’s eastern border. He passed
through once thriving cities of this country and saw the marks left behind by
years of abuse and misrule. Almost, 2,500 harrowing miles later, he reached the
Atlantic Ocean, a thinner and a wiser
man.
Butcher’s journey was a remarkable feat.
But the story of the
Congo, vividly told in
Blood River, is more remarkable
still.
