In Search Of And Others

A house inches eight hundred miles to confess its horrible crime. The last resident of a mental institution discovers he's not alone. A middle-schooler performs an experiment to determine how much time we fit in dreams. Boys looking for wonder find more than they're expecting in the Adirondacks with Charles Fort. A detective learns everything he's ever wanted to know...and some things he hasn't. In Will Ludwigsen's short stories of strangeness and mystery--a finalist for the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection--the universe has a way of being weird in just the ways we need it to be. There are answers to many of our deepest questions...and they're usually far more personal than we expect. What are you in search of? And what is in search of you? Kirkus Reviews names In Search Of and Others as one of the Best Books of 2013! And the book was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection

Identity Crisis. As a biracial teen, Nina is accustomed to a life of varied hues—mocha-colored skin, ringed brown hair streaked with red, a darker brother, a black father, a white mother. When her parents decide to divorce, the rainbow of Nina’s existence is reduced to a much starker reality. Shifting definitions and relationships are playing out all around her, and new boxes and lines seem to be getting drawn every day. Between the fractures within her family and the racial tensions splintering her hometown, Nina feels caught in perpetual battle. Feeling stranded in the nowhere land between racial boundaries, and struggling for personal independence and identity, Nina turns to the story of her great-great-grandmother’s escape from slavery. Is there direction in the tale of her ancestor? Can Nina build her own compass when landmarks from her childhood stop guiding the way?

EVER WONDERED WHY PEOPLE REALLY DO WHAT THEY DO? (AND WHAT WE COULD ACCOMPLISH IF WE ONLY KNEW?) We need a clear-eyed look at what’s happening in society right now. Social systems are being undermined, or failing, before our eyes. The trust that we once had in organizations, corporations, journalism, education, science, medicine, government—and even one another—is compromised. People are feeling isolated and alone. How do we move forward as a society? How can we connect with and understand one another? How do we find productive ways to communicate, meeting those we are trying to reach where they are and speaking to what’s important to them? And how do we have robust and productive dialogue that (re)builds meaningful, supportive, and resilient relationships and institutions? Bob Raleigh suggests that any approach must start by understanding the why. The Search for Why compellingly demonstrates that we need a better model and follows Raleigh on his career journey to find one. In this book, Raleigh draws on his decades of experience in market research and public-communication strategy, the possibilities of our contemporary era of big data, and groundbreaking research from psychology, cognitive and behavioral sciences, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy, all of which have informed the Model of Why approach that he proposes. For anyone looking to persuade people, heal divisions, or build better relationships, The Search for Why is a crucial step in the right direction.

The writings of the "dean of the New York School of Abstract-Expressionist Painting." "The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature; translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive and every work of art should be alive." Thus Hans Hofmann wrote nearly half a century ago. He left the Old World, Germany, for the New, at the age of 50. In 1948, when the retrospective exhibition was held at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Hofmann was 68; he had been in the United States for 18 years, a citizen for seven years. Yet he was scarcely recognized in Europe or America as an artist of significance and had never had a full-scale retrospective exhibition of his work. Beginning with a group exhibition in Germany in 1909, he had been given 12 one-man shows and had been included in four group exhibitions before the exhibit at Andover. Subsequently, he was to have 33 one-man shows and to be in over 60 group exhibitions, including the 1960 Venice Biennale, in which he was one of the four artists chosen to represent America. The catalogue of the 1948 retrospective at the Addison Gallery incorporated Hofmann's writings, all originally written in German, some pieces translated fluently, others awkwardly paraphrasing the original. He had written them over a period of 40 years for periodicals journals, or his own teaching purposes; occasionally they overlapped; there was no sequence of development. In the original volume of Search for the Real, published in 1948, it was felt desirable to edit his writing as little as possible, nevertheless to present the essays in the most lucid English true to his meaning, printed only with his approval. "The Search for the Real in the Visual Arts," "Sculpture," and "Painting and Culture" were all printed in full. The section "Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann" was composed of selections from his essays "On the Aims of Art" and "Plastic Creation." The last brief section, "Terms," was gleaned from the other essays, lectures, diagrams, notes, and cryptic memoranda written to himself, headed by one of Hoffman's diagrams. It was a further distillation of his own definitions in the nature of a vocabulary. In the last 18 years of his life, recognition was his, nationally and internationally, in proportion to the originality and depth of his thinking, his versatility and comprehensiveness, his productivity and vigor. His was a prophetic visual expression of action in a three-dimensional world on a vibrating two-dimensional surface. He was a dynamic teacher; the wide range of his influence is to be seen in the list of artists comprising an exhibition "Hans Hofmann and His Students," circulated in America and abroad during the three years before his death in 1966. Among the 32 painters and sculptors in this exhibition were students as varied in their developed personal idioms as Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Rivers, Louise Nevelson, Richard Stankiewicz, and Alan Kaprow. Running simultaneously and also shown in South America and Europe as well as in the United States, a one-man show of 40 major works initiated by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, is a testimony to the words of the "dean of the New York School of Abstract-Expressionist Painting."

A Leading Figure in the Development of the New Cosmology Explains What It All Means Among his peers, Alex Vilenkin is regarded as one of the most imaginative and creative cosmologists of our time. His contributions to our current understanding of the universe include a number of novel ideas, two of which—eternal cosmic inflation and the quantum creation of the universe from nothing—have provided a scientific foundation for the possible existence of multiple universes. With this book—his first for the general reader—Vilenkin joins another select group: the handful of first-rank scientists who are equally adept at explaining their work to nonspecialists. With engaging, well-paced storytelling, a droll sense of humor, and a generous sprinkling of helpful cartoons, he conjures up a bizarre and fascinating new worldview that—to paraphrase Niels Bohr—just might be crazy enough to be true.

Rabbits who hate their own names, proud parrots who despise other creatures, animals wanting to be what they are not... Creatures who are all too human. Imaginative stories that entertain and teach. A book that teaches you to be yourself, to value friendship and honesty. A read-aloud book for tiny tots.

This fanciful, original collection for readers of all ages features arithmetic puzzles, logic problems related to crime detection, and logic and arithmetic puzzles involving King Arthur and his Dogs of the Round Table.