I was a suburban kid in Knoxville, Tennessee and Dayton, Ohio and didn’t see much wrong with my neighborhood. As someone who then grew up to write and teach about the history of cities and city planning, I’ve long been struck by the mismatch between high-brow scorn for “suburbia” and the everyday experience of people who live in suburban communities. This short book is an effort to show how the world became suburban and what that meant to people in the different corners of the world—and maybe to put in a plug for my suburban Meadow Hills and College Hill neighborhoods.
No other book has had a greater influence on the ways that planners have tried to create the perfect suburban community, from England to the United States, Finland to France, Brazil to Australia.
Howard published his ideas about how to create humane suburbs more than 120 years ago with the future of London in mind, but they still resonate around the globe. Google “new towns” and the hits may be overwhelming. That’s testimony to the power of a good idea.
By the way, if you live in Columbia, Maryland or Irvine, California, you’re living in a version of “Howardville.”
As I watched abandoned buildings, homes, and factories spread throughout neighborhoods in Detroit while photographers came from everywhere to photograph the ruins, I became fascinated with why we are drawn to ruins, what role such imagery plays in our collective imagination, and how ruins today are different than, say, Greek ruins. I am also interested in the politics behind the ruins and the role of capitalism in creating our declining cities. I have written several books on visual culture and politics, engaging with issues of race, trauma, memory, war, and capitalist globalization.
Although Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts allude to it, I had no idea until I read Greg Grandin’s book that Henry Ford attempted to extend his auto industry empire into the Amazon by building the company town of Fordlandia in the Brazilian jungle. I am fascinated by the suspenseful narrative Grandin creates around Ford’s ultimately disastrous failure at creating his own rubber-producing teetotaling town.
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greg Grandin comes the stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon
In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets.
Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an…
I am an expat Australian freelance writer living in Silicon Valley, and also the mother of two boys aged ten and seven. My boys are avid readers and it is an accepted rule that no one in our family speaks at breakfast. I have a bad habit of reading books over their shoulders, but my boys are still willing helpers on some current writing projects on kids’ fiction and circumnavigating the horribly sad “decline at nine”. I also have a PhD in South Asian Studies and have worked in commercial research and marketing.
This isn’t one you’ll enjoy reading over your kid’s shoulder unless you truly are a diehard soccer fan. Matt and Tom Oldfield’s series of soccer-star bios are comfort food for tween fans - a bland, seemingly never-ending diet of rags to riches stories to inspire every kid with dreams of the Premier League. The prose is undemanding: “With his mohawk dyed red this time, Neymar Jr walked onto the stage. He couldn’t believe what was happening. His goal had beaten brilliant strikes by Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi”. The story unfolds with a happy triumphalism: Neymar is spotted as a deft-footed child prodigy, he is scouted to the heights of Barcelona, he overcomes injuries, he puts the team first, he is a mega-star who does noble things for Brazil. If you’re not a soccer person, the Oldfields’ books on Lionel Messi, Harry Kane and Paul Pogba don’t read very differently.…
1
author picked
Neymar
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
8,
9,
10, and
11.
What is this book about?
The No.1 football series - over 1 million copies sold!
'As Neymar Jr made the long walk to the penalty spot, he knew this was his chance, the one that he had dreamed of since the age of three. If he scored, Brazil would be Olympic Champions for the first time ever.'
Neymar da Silva Santos Junior is the boy who carries the hopes of Brazil on his shoulders. Although he now faces a new challenge at Paris Saint-Germain, it was his years playing for Barcelona, in a fearsome attacking trident alongside Messi and Suarez, that made him a legend…
I'm a psychoanalyst and a writer. I'm fascinated with the thoughts, feelings, dreams, and fantasies that make up our inner worlds, and I love how the beauty of language can reach beyond what ordinary experience seems to suggest. My novels take place in the minds of their protagonists; I look through their eyes and follow the ideas, memories, and hopes that guide their lives. I enjoy their idiosyncrasies, allow them to be weird, vulnerable, and volatile, and I think of them as lovable and in times of adversity as brave as any human being can be.
I only discovered the world-renowned author Clarice Lispector in 2015, when the excellent edition of her complete stories was published.
Her capacity for keen and idiosyncratic observation penetrates the human heart and mind and makes her tales simultaneously shocking, amusing and thought provoking. Imagine to read the story of a chicken and feel yourself being almost passionately involved in its short life! Or think of the birthday party of an 89-year-old woman, who despises her family that surrounds her in barely veiled hostility!
These stories are amazing in every way; they are rooted in a deep understanding of the human mind, and their psychological grasp is eye-opening. I find them much more accessible than Lispector's novels and enjoy rereading them from time to time.
Here, gathered in one volume, are the stories that made Clarice a Brazilian legend. Originally a cloth edition of eighty-six stories, now we have eighty- nine in all, covering her whole amazing career, from her teenage years to her deathbed. In these pages, we meet teenagers becoming aware of their sexual and artistic powers, humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies, old people who don't know what to do with themselves- and in their stories, Clarice takes us through their lives-and hers-and ours.
Raised in a proud Jewish home, I was instilled with an appreciation for my cultural heritage from a very young age. Today, I am utterly fascinated with the convergence of Judaism and popular culture in film, television, comics, literature, and other media. After college, I became a freelance entertainment journalist, writing stories for SYFY WIRE,The Hollywood Reporter,Forbes, and Marvel Entertainment. I currently reside in Philadelphia with my wife, Leora, and adorable Cavapoo, Archie.
In someone else’s hands, the tale of a global Nazi conspiracy to restore the Third Reich to its former glory by cloning Adolf Hitler would probably come off as utter insanity. But Levin makes you believe every word of it, funneling the story through the eyes of Nazi hunter Yakov Liebermann (based on Simon Wiesenthal) and infamous doctor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Josef Mengele.
In this classic thriller, Ira Levin imagines Dr Josef Mengele's nightmarish plot to restore the Third Reich. Alive and hiding in South America, thirty years after the end of the Second World War, Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a sinister project - the creation of the Fourth Reich. Ageing Nazi hunter Yakov Lieberman is informed of the plot but before he hears the evidence, his source is killed . . .
Spanning continents and inspired by true events, what follows is one of Levin's most masterful tales, both timeless and chillingly plausible.
I feel passionate about spreading the word about all the fantastic children’s literature set in South America. As an author and a multilingual mom whose son enjoys learning about his Latin American heritage, I’ve always brought home stacks of picture books—in Spanish and English—that celebrate Latin American cultures and settings. I’ve loved traveling to the Andes mountains and the Amazon rain forest as part of my children’s book collaborations with Indigenous women in those regions. Most of all, I love transporting young readers to these inspiring places through story.
The vibrant, colorful cut-out style mosaic artwork first caught my eye—it creates a jubilant sensory experience.
In poignant observations, the author recounts what he saw as a boy from his window, in his favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Although favelas might have problems with lack of services and violence, this story is a celebration of the creative spirit of the favela, where Brazilian funk was born, and where future soccer super-stars hone their skills.
This is a poignant glimpse into the poetry of people’s lives in the favela, and it captivated me completely.
What do you see from your window? This #OwnVoices picture book from Brazil offers a first-hand view of what children growing up in the favelas of Rio de Janiero see everyday. A vibrant and diverse celebration of urban community living, brought to life by unique, colorful illustrations that juxtapose brick buildings with lush jungle plants.
Having grown up under a repressive dictatorship in Iran, I always wondered about how humans could come together to bring about change. Years of living in different countries have only prolonged that quest. I had identified as a socialist since my teen years in the 2000s (when this political identity wasn’t so popular) and have continuously studied the history of the Left and the pathways it offers to make a better world. I don’t believe in exhaustive favorite lists, so these are just five books that, I think, will help us better appreciate this long history of a quest for progress.
I loved this book because it gave me an inside account of many social movements from the stormy decade of 2010s that I had either lived through or followed from afar.
Based on interviews in 12 countries from Brazil to Bahrain to Ukraine, the book has a truly global reach and lets you understand a nagging question: Why did so little change in the world even as there were so many mass protests in the last decade?
I especially enjoyed the fact that the book takes political ideas seriously while remaining readable and giving us a full-fleshed portrayal of its main characters, whether they be a leading leftist politician in Brasilia or a young protester in Kyiv.
This book is phenomenal ... It's about as good as journalism gets ...The highest praise I can give If We Burn is to say that it would be criminally negligent not to read it if you'd like to change the world. - ROB DELANEY
Bevins's clear-eyed, sympathetic account of the unfulfilled promise of these protests leaves his reader with a bold vision of the future. - MERVE EMRE
A stunning history of now. - GREG GRANDIN
From 2010 to 2020, more people took part in protests than at any other point in human history. Why has success been so elusive?…
I’m a writer and a Spanish teacher. Creative and a little crazy. I love teaching people who arrive in my city (Madrid) to live for a while. I love writing fiction, specially novels, but also poetry and little stories. Sometimes I mix both skills and create texts as the one below. I dream about winning the lottery but I never buy tickets, and I also love to sing with my guitar when I’m alone. Pleased to meet you.
I would never recommend this book to a student who doesn’t have a good level of Spanish, and who doesn’t have enough confidence. Nevertheless, it’s perfect for intermediate to high level students, who are already well trained, to go deep in their acknowledgement and mend mistakes.
Reading this book can even help you discover mistakes that you didn’t know you were doing and polish aspects of the use of the Spanish language that you ignored. It’s oriented to the difficulties of English speakers, but you can find other versions for speakers of other languages (German, Italian, Brazilian).
Another very good aspect of this little book is its price. Really affordable for its good quality content.
Este libro recopila los errores que con más frecuencia cometen los angloparlantes que quieren aprender español y sugiere una solución. En él se expone el error, se dan claves y fórmulas para corregirlo, y se proponen una serie de ejercicios para consolidar el aprendizaje. Al final del libro hay una sección con las soluciones de todos los ejercicios.
I am a teacher, author, & parent, determined to help keep our earth healthy for future generations. A few Earth Days ago, my students asked why we only set aside one day a year to practice eco-healthy habits. Good question! As a teacher, I know how crucial it is for authors to get our facts right. Before writing Dear Earth… I read stacks of books and articles on our environment. I am indebted to science expert & author Melissa Stewart, and my friend Patricia Newman (Plastic Ahoy!; Planet Ocean / Lerner), as well. I sincerely hope Dear Earth… and the books on my list inspire Earth Heroes everywhere--every day.
The Old Man and the Penguin is based on a TRUE story of how a Brazilian man, João Pereira de Souza, rescued and cared for a Magellanic penguin caught in an oil spill. It’s 1-part rhymed picture book + 1-part fascinating nonfiction + 2-parts sweet story of friendship that shows the importance of environmental awareness and stewardship. I can see kids reading it over and over, like I have. I bet it would start wonderful discussions about how human activities often threaten Earth’s wildlife—and how we might change that.
Told in rhyming verse, this is the touching true story of an oil-soaked penguin, the man who rescues him and an unlikely friendship. João hears “a sorry screech” as he walks along the shore near his home. It's from a penguin, whose feathers are soaked in oil. Too tired to swim, too weak to stand, he's barely moving on the sand. João must save this little guy. Without his help, he'll surely die. João takes the penguin home. He cleans him, feeds him and nurses him slowly back to health --- and the pair develop a special bond. When the…
As a geologist and gemmologist, I am particularly fascinated with how the Earth works and landscapes change; how mountains, valleys, rivers, and seas are made; where and why volcanoes and earthquakes occur; and about crystals and gemstones for jewelry. My mother reminds me that since I was a toddler, I have loved to collect small pebbles and "sparkly things." I am passionate about teaching and writing for adults and children and lecture in universities and on cruise ships worldwide. Formerly the curator of more than 5,000 gemstones at the Natural History Museum, I am an examiner for the Gem-A, internationally recognised by jewelers worldwide.
I am in awe of the sheer breadth of knowledge in this book about diamonds. I am amazed that diamond has such simple chemistry, made by bonding carbon atoms, yet forms the hardest natural substance known. Scientific experts, including geologists, gemmologists, and physicists, tell the story of its formation, exploration, mining, and economic value, but I found that there is so much more in this book of interest than just the science.
What I particularly liked was reading about the cultural nature of diamonds and what makes diamond so special to so many people worldwide from artisanal miners scraping a living out of the ground, to monarchs and millionaires who adorn themselves with diamond jewellery.
The new technologies of making diamonds in the laboratory left me wondering what that might mean for the future of diamond mining and sales.
The paragon of physical perfection and a sparkling example of Earth's forces at work, the diamond has fascinated all realms of society, from Russian tsars and Hollywood stars to scientists and brides-to-be. The Nature of Diamonds is an authoritative and richly illustrated look at nature's most coveted gem. Leading geologists, gemologists, physicists, and cultural observers cover every facet of the stone, from its formation in the depths of the Earth and its explosive ascent to the surface, to its economic, regal, social, and technological roles. The book takes the reader to cutting-edge research on the frontiers of diamond exploration and…
