And Then The World Blew Up

This collection is an intellectual punch in the face to the new political order. What do you get when you cross a fistful of pens and an enormous stack of blank paper with somebody who resents the sweet-smelling muzzle of good manners and polite conversation, who delights in always saying the wrong thing at the right time in contempt of every expectation that the naked truth is at all obscene? This is a collection of cartoons, illustrations, personal essays, culture-war correspondence and interviews with famous intellectual and artistic outlaws, who, like the author, are just trying to defuse the apocalyptic bomb that is the miracle of our Creation. Drawn, painted, and collaged in Mr. Fish’s many virtuosic styles, this is an eloquent take-no-prisoners response to American political life.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda goes to Italy in Arvin Ahmadi's newest incisive look at identity and what it means to find yourself by running away. Eighteen-year-old Amir Azadi always knew coming out to his Muslim family would be messy--he just didn't think it would end in an airport interrogation room. But when faced with a failed relationship, bullies, and blackmail, running away to Rome is his only option. Right? Soon, late nights with new friends and dates in the Sistine Chapel start to feel like second nature... until his old life comes knocking on his door. Now, Amir has to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth to a US Customs officer, or risk losing his hard-won freedom. At turns uplifting and devastating, How It All Blew Up is Arvin Ahmadi's most powerful novel yet, a celebration of how life's most painful moments can live alongside the riotous, life-changing joys of discovering who you are.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

To Pass On a Good Earth is the candid and compelling new biography of one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive and influential scholars. The legendary "Great God beyond the Sierras," Carl Ortwin Sauer is America’s most famed geographer, an inspiration to both academics and poets, yet no book-length biography of him has existed until now. This Missouri-born son of German immigrants contributed to many fields, with a versatility rare in his time and virtually unknown today. Sauer explored plant and animal domestication, the entry of Native Americans into the continent, their transformation of the land into prairies and cultivated fields, and subsequent European enterprise that fueled prosperity but also triggered environmental degradation and the loss of cultural diversity. Providing profound and invaluable insights into the human occupance, cultivation--and often ruination--of the earth, Sauer revolutionized our understanding of the impact of European conquest of the New World. Author and fellow geographer Michael Williams had access to Sauer’s voluminous correspondence in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley and in family collections. Enlivened by these intimate letters to family and colleagues, To Pass On a Good Earth reveals the rare qualities of mind and heart that made Sauer one of America’s most treasured--as well as troubled--intellectual pioneers. He brought both historical rigor and humanistic understanding to the burgeoning environmental movement and ceaselessly championed an ecumenical approach in an age of increasing specialization.

Approximately 2.5 million men and women have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the service of the U.S. War on Terror. Marian Eide and Michael Gibler have collected and compiled personal combat accounts from some of these war veterans. In modern warfare no deployment meets the expectations laid down by stories of Appomattox, Ypres, Iwo Jima, or Tet. Stuck behind a desk or the wheel of a truck, many of today's veterans feel they haven't even been to war though they may have listened to mortars in the night or dodged improvised explosive devices during the day. When a drone is needed to verify a target's death or bullets are sprayed like grass seed, military offensives can lack the immediacy that comes with direct contact. After Combat bridges the gap between sensationalized media and reality by telling war's unvarnished stories. Participating soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel (retired, on leave, or at the beginning of military careers) describe combat in the ways they believe it should be understood. In this collection of interviews, veterans speak anonymously with pride about their own strengths and accomplishments, with gratitude for friendships and adventures, and also with shame, regret, and grief, while braving controversy, misunderstanding, and sanction. In the accounts of these veterans, Eide and Gibler seek to present what Vietnam veteran and writer Tim O'Brien calls a "true war story"--one without obvious purpose or moral imputation and independent of civilian logic, propaganda goals, and even peacetime convention.

The Global 1980s takes an international perspective on the upheaval across the world during the long 1980s (1979–1991) with the end of the Cold War, a move towards a free-market economic system, and the increasing connectedness of the world. The 1980s was a decade of unimaginable change. At its start, dictatorships across the world appeared stable, the state was still seen as having a role to play in ensuring people’s well-being, and the Cold War seemed set to continue long into the future. By the end of the decade, dictatorships had fallen, globalisation was on the march and the opening of the Berlin Wall paved the way for the end of the Cold War. Divided into four chronological parts, sixteen chapters on themes including domestic politics, the global spread of democracy, international relations and global concerns including AIDS, acid rain and nuclear war, explore how world-wide change was initiated both from above and below. The book covers such topics as ideological changes in the liberal democratic west and socialist east, protests against nuclear weapons and for democratic governance, global environmental worries, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. Offering an overview of a decade in transition, as the global order established after 1945 broke down and a new, globalised world order emerged, and supported by case studies from across the world, this truly global book is an essential resource for students and scholars of the long 1980s and the twentieth century more generally.

Generation Wonder: The New Age of Heroes is a high-flying YA anthology featuring 13 short stories that turn superhero tropes on their head and offer fresh perspectives on modern myths. Triumph. Tragedy. The empyreal. The infernal. Even the mundane, filtered through the fantastical. Superheroes are, appropriately enough, a sort of super-genre, encompassing all other story types. This YA anthology features 13 short stories that creatively turn superhero tropes on their head, while still paying homage to the genre that has found fans for more than eight decades. And there will be no mistake—superheroes don’t have to just be generic handsome white dudes. Everyone in the world, no matter their race, sexual preference, pronouns, or level of ability, has dreamed of flying. Contributors include six New York Times bestselling authors, seven multiple award winners, a founder of We Need Diverse Books, and at least one author with millions of books in print in the United States alone. The collection is edited by New York Times bestselling author Barry Lyga, and it also features illustrations from Colleen Doran—New York Times bestselling cartoonist and artist of the legendary Stan Lee’s memoir. The full list of contributors includes: Barry Lyga, Paul Levitz, Sarah MacLean, Lamar Giles, Elizabeth Eulberg, Danielle Paige, Varian Johnson, Joseph Bruchac, Morgan Baden, Matthew Phillion, Anna-Marie McLemore, Sterling Gates, and Axie Oh.

A teenage boy in the mountains of North Carolina desires to get out of the "cycle" of a dysfunctional home and school life. Finally successful in breaking free, he quickly discovers that destiny has a plan for him and greatness is an understatement. An ancient legend passed down through a Native American tribe tells of one who will emerge as a great leader and even a "savior," just in time before the world faces a major cataclysmic event. Taught to shoot a bow and arrow, the boy demonstrates incredible skill during his first lesson. Could he be the Tamechactee? Meanwhile, a sinister being over in Normandy, France known only as "The Maker" has a plan to set off nuclear bombs throughout the world, not to kill everyone but to bring humans into submission. What is the real purpose, and can anyone save humanity from this demonic fiend? The sequel, Tamechactee: Battle for Humanity, finishes this epic story!