This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers

This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers PDF Author: Jeff Sharlet
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324003219
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
“A luminous, moving and visual record of fleeting moments of connection.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice A visionary work of radical empathy. Known for immersion journalism that is more immersed than most people are willing to go, and for a prose style that is somehow both fierce and soulful, Jeff Sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us. This work began when his father had a heart attack; two years later, Jeff, still in his forties, had a heart attack of his own. In the grip of writerly self-doubt, Jeff turned to images, taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram, writing short, true stories that bloomed into documentary. During those two years, he spent a lot of time on the road: meeting strangers working night shifts as he drove through the mountains to see his father; exploring the life and death of Charley Keunang, a once-aspiring actor shot by the police on LA’s Skid Row; documenting gay pride amidst the violent homophobia of Putin’s Russia; passing time with homeless teen addicts in Dublin; and accompanying a lonely woman, whose only friend was a houseplant, on shopping trips. Early readers have called this book “incantatory,” the voice “prophetic,” in “James Agee’s tradition of looking at the reality of American lives.” Defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers—night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless, the lost (or merely disoriented), and other people on the margins—This Brilliant Darkness erases the boundaries between author, subject, and reader to ask: how do people live with suffering?

This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers

This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers PDF Author: Jeff Sharlet
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324003219
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book

Book Description
“A luminous, moving and visual record of fleeting moments of connection.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice A visionary work of radical empathy. Known for immersion journalism that is more immersed than most people are willing to go, and for a prose style that is somehow both fierce and soulful, Jeff Sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us. This work began when his father had a heart attack; two years later, Jeff, still in his forties, had a heart attack of his own. In the grip of writerly self-doubt, Jeff turned to images, taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram, writing short, true stories that bloomed into documentary. During those two years, he spent a lot of time on the road: meeting strangers working night shifts as he drove through the mountains to see his father; exploring the life and death of Charley Keunang, a once-aspiring actor shot by the police on LA’s Skid Row; documenting gay pride amidst the violent homophobia of Putin’s Russia; passing time with homeless teen addicts in Dublin; and accompanying a lonely woman, whose only friend was a houseplant, on shopping trips. Early readers have called this book “incantatory,” the voice “prophetic,” in “James Agee’s tradition of looking at the reality of American lives.” Defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers—night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless, the lost (or merely disoriented), and other people on the margins—This Brilliant Darkness erases the boundaries between author, subject, and reader to ask: how do people live with suffering?

Sweet Heaven When I Die

Sweet Heaven When I Die PDF Author: Jeff Sharlet
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393079635
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Linked narrative nonfiction from the best-selling author of The Family. No one explores the borderlands of belief and skepticism quite like Jeff Sharlet. He is ingenious, farsighted, and able to excavate the worlds of others, even the flakiest and most fanatical, with uncanny sympathy. Here, he reports back from the far reaches of belief, whether in the clear mountain air of "Sweet Fuck All, Colorado" or in a midnight congregation of urban anarchists celebrating a victory over police. From Dr. Cornel West to legendary banjo player Dock Boggs, from the youth evangelist Ron Luce to America's largest "Mind, Body, Spirit Expo," Sharlet profiles religious radicals, realists, and escapists. Including extended journeys published here for the first time, Sweet Heaven When I Die offers a portrait of our spiritual landscape that calls to mind Joan Didion's classic Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Smile at Strangers

Smile at Strangers PDF Author: Susan Schorn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547774338
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
A rollicking memoir about the rewards of risk and the surprising facts of safety and self-defense, from a woman who has earned two black belts in her pursuit of living fearlessly.

See No Stranger

See No Stranger PDF Author: Valarie Kaur
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0525509097
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
An urgent manifesto and a dramatic memoir of awakening, this is the story of revolutionary love. Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize • “In a world stricken with fear and turmoil, Valarie Kaur shows us how to summon our deepest wisdom.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love How do we love in a time of rage? How do we fix a broken world while not breaking ourselves? Valarie Kaur—renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer—describes revolutionary love as the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. Starting from that place of wonder, the world begins to change: It is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, even a nation. Kaur takes readers through her own riveting journey—as a brown girl growing up in California farmland finding her place in the world; as a young adult galvanized by the murders of Sikhs after 9/11; as a law student fighting injustices in American prisons and on Guantánamo Bay; as an activist working with communities recovering from xenophobic attacks; and as a woman trying to heal from her own experiences with police violence and sexual assault. Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists, Kaur reclaims love as an active, public, and revolutionary force that creates new possibilities for ourselves, our communities, and our world. See No Stranger helps us imagine new ways of being with each other—and with ourselves—so that together we can begin to build the world we want to see.

The Strangers

The Strangers PDF Author: Katherena Vermette
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826366074
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The Strangers, a breathtaking companion to Vermette's bestselling debut The Break, is a fierce exploration of of bonds that refuse to be broken even in the most traumatic of circumstances. Cedar, Phoenix, and Elsie—these are the strangers, each haunted in her own way. Cedar grapples with the pain of being separated from her mother, Elsie, and her sister, Phoenix. From a youth detention center, Phoenix gives birth to a baby she'll never get to raise. And Elsie, struggling with addiction and determined to turn her life around, is buoyed by the idea of being reunited with her daughters and striving to be someone they can depend on, unlike her own distant mother. Between flickering moments of warmth and support, the women diverge and reconnect, fighting to survive in a fractured system that pretends to offer success but expects them to fail. Facing the distinct blade of racism from those they trusted most, they urge one another to move through the darkness, all the while wondering if they'll ever emerge safely on the other side.

Talking to Strangers

Talking to Strangers PDF Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316535621
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

C Street

C Street PDF Author: Jeff Sharlet
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702238651
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
'A gripping political thriller, a masterpiece of investigative journalism' Peter Manseau, author of Rag and Bone The secretive Christian fundamentalist group known as 'The Family' is leading a new crusade for 'God-led government'.Jeff Sharlet, authorThe Family (more than 100,000 copies sold worldwide), is the only journalist to have reported from insidethe organisation. The Family garnered intense media coverage in 2009 when theirtownhouse on Washington's C Street was central to three Republican sex scandals. Now Sharlet uncovers the convert efforts of C Street to transform the very fabric of Western democracy, with the Family, steeped in the influence and corruption usually associated with the notorious lobbing industry, fueling political fundamentalism from within government. When Barack Obama took office, headlines declared the age of culture wars over. In C Street, Sharlet show why these conflicts endure and why they matter now-from Uganda, where culture warriors are determined to eradicate homosexuality, to the battle for the soul of America's armed forces. Reporting with exclusive sources and explosives documents, Sharlet reveals the terrifying new front-lines of fundamentalism. PRAISE FOR THE FAMILY 'This expose of the hidden face of Christian fundamentalism is authoritative and alarming.' The Age 'One of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you'll ever read.' Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Smile or Die

Stranger Will

Stranger Will PDF Author: Caleb J. Ross
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1780998058
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
The child he loves. The idea of a child, he's beginning to understand, is where everything will go wrong. William works as a human remains removal specialist, removing stains left by the dead. Whether by a bloody crime scene or a quiet domestic death, William is reminded each day of the frailty of human life. As his fiancée, Julie, nears term with their first child William becomes increasingly desperate for a way to overcome his belief that to birth is to kill. But Mrs. Rose, an elementary school principal and messenger pigeon hobbyist, nurtures William’s depressive outlook and claims to have a way to prove that William’s hesitancy to accept fatherhood is not only natural but necessary. In this novel of impending parenthood, an idealistic teacher recruits a pliant protégé to join her group of Strangers – a devout collection of kindred minds who have dedicated their lives to cultivating a unique idea of perfection. But joining is easier than leaving.

The Hands of Strangers

The Hands of Strangers PDF Author: Michael Farris Smith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476788472
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
In the tradition of The Stranger and The Old Man and the Sea, this taut novella by critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith (Rivers, 2013) explores the human spirit and its capacity for faith and forgiveness in an imperfect world. What happens to a marriage when a child vanishes? Jon and Estelle walk the picturesque Paris streets, but are living through the cruelest of realties—the disappearance of their nine-year-old daughter Jennifer, abducted from the Musée D’Orsay during a class field trip. Jon spends his day slugging through bus terminals and metro halls, posting flyers of his daughter, while Estelle has become a recluse, unwilling to leave the apartment in case the telephone rings. Their relationship suffers as the passing time chips away at the hope of Jennifer’s return. Then, a free-spirited artist enters their life as unexpectedly as Jennifer has left it, luring Jon down a reckless path as he searches desperately for courage in the smallest signs. If their daughter is ever returned to them, will Jon and Estelle both be there to welcome her home?

Strangers She Knows

Strangers She Knows PDF Author: Christina Dodd
Publisher: HQN Books
ISBN: 148808596X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
I have three deadly problems: 1. I’ve seriously offended a maniacal killer. 2. I just had a bullet removed from my brain. 3. My new daughter is growing up too fast--and she’s in the line of fire. Living on an obscure, technology-free island off California means safety from the murderer who hunts Kellen Adams and her new family.... Or does it? Family time becomes terror-time, and at last, alone, Kellen faces a killer playing a cruel game. Only one can survive, and Kellen knows who must win...and who must die. STRANGERS SHE KNOWS: The Grand Finale of Cape Charade Thrillers available now! Read the acclaimed Cape Charade series: #1 HARD TO KILL: A Cape Charade Short Suspense #2 DEAD GIRL RUNNING: A Cape Charade Full-length Thriller #3 FAMILIES AND OTHER ENEMIES: A Cape Charade Short Suspense #4 WHAT DOESN’T KILL ME: A Cape Charade Full-length Thriller #5. HIDDEN TRUTHS: A Cape Charade Short Suspense #6. STRANGERS SHE KNOWS: A Cape Charade Full-length Thriller Coming in Audio! The three Cape Charade short suspenses, HARD TO KILL, FAMILIES AND OTHER ENEMIES and HIDDEN TRUTHS, starring Kellen Adams.