As I continue to contend with the painful, inequitable, and lasting consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic—as an educator, mother, and human in the world—this book made our nation’s trauma in the HIV/AIDS pandemic real, personal, and urgent in a way nothing else I have read has done.
It was beautifully written and page-turning. I felt rage at our healthcare system’s failings, and homophobia was weaponized. I mourned the losses and the devastation of a generation forever touched by so much trauma.
I celebrated survival and the many ways people forged community amidst the devastation. I could not stop reading, and—months after I finished—I still think about the characters and Makkai’s capturing of these terrible and wonderful moments in our collective history.
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER
Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler
"A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it's like to live during times of crisis." -The New York Times Book Review
A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an…
I have been wanting to read more books in translation because I speak and read Spanish as well as English (and I’m fascinated by language and the various meanings it can convey), but I truly would not have expected a Holocaust novel to be as captivating and almost breathless a reading experience as this was.
The mystery element was legitimately suspenseful, the relationships among family members sincere and enduring, and the portrayal of complex characters and their moral decisions and failings nuanced and thought-provoking.
When I realized (halfway through!) that the novel is based on a thoroughly researched story of the author’s own family’s story, I knew it would stay with me for a long time.
Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.
January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz.
I heard Lucas speak on a panel discussion my university had about the Ogallala Aquifer. That put his book—and his tremendously poignant examination of climate change, environmental loss, and human/land interactions in my corner of the world—on my radar.
He included several well-referenced facts I’ve subsequently worked into conversations about environmental damage in our region, as well as a deeply personal accounting of his own family’s contributions to aquifer depletion and our collective complicity in the destruction that will echo in our ecosystem forever.
I am grateful to Bessire for his courage candor, and compassion, for taking an honest look at what has been done to the Plains and what that means for people in this place, and for inviting his readers to journey from willful ignorance to thoughtful reflection to principled action… together.
Finalist for the National Book Award An intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America's heartland
The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.
Anthropologist Lucas Bessire journeyed back to western Kansas, where five generations of his family…
An invitation for social work students to examine, engage, and influence the policies that affect their practice—and their clients’ lives.
The book provides tools to help students approach policy practice as part of their social work career, as well as profiles of social workers engaged in policy practice whose examples can inspire and inform students’ own efforts.
The sixth edition has been fully updated to ensure students are equipped with relevant, accessible, and value-centered resources and insights with which to navigate the rapidly changing policy landscape.
