In Search Of Home

In 1990 the author was visited by Jesus and was given a message for the world. This experience began her search for Home a place we are all from and will eventually return to. This book is a compilation of her revelations, inspirational stories, personal pearls of wisdom and step by step exercises to remember who you are and from whence you came. Ancient wisdom in modern day form. This book is bursting with knowledge to light your way home. Carol believes that as each person learns about themselves their contribution is essential for the evolution of all of humanity. Her goal is to tell you what she has learned thus far to help you as she has been guided by those before her. A must have for the soul seeker.

In Search of Home explores new, yet less explored space of urban poverty – rehabilitation housing that houses the displaced poor and increasingly dots the peripheries of Indian cities. It examines the politics of the poor focusing on law, citizenship and gender. Contesting the assumption that illegalities emerge due to lack of legal rights to property, this ethnography of the everyday narrates how the rehabilitated poor despite legal residence experience 'citizenship in limbo', suspended between an illegal past and an imagined future of full citizenship. The book details the flexible governance of such neighbourhoods, studying how the state produces illegalities, and how state institutions and actors stand to gain. By looking at how systemic corruption draws urban poor groups into webs of exchanges with the state, de-radicalising and co-opting the poor, it exposes the gendered underbelly of urban poor struggles, uncovering the role women play in eliciting the paternalism of the state.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From an award-winning journalist, a poignant and gripping immersion in the life of a young, homeless single mother amid her quest to find stability and shelter in the richest city in America LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD • “Riveting . . . a remarkable feat of reporting.”—The New York Times Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren Sandler chronicles a year in Camila’s life—from the birth of her son to his first birthday—as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City. In her attempts to secure a safe place to raise her son and find a measure of freedom in her life, Camila copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, the desolation of abandonment, and miles of red tape with grit, humor, and uncanny resilience. Every day, more than forty-five million Americans attempt to survive below the poverty line. Every night, nearly sixty thousand people sleep in New York City-run shelters, 40 percent of them children. In This Is All I Got, Sandler brings this deeply personal issue to life, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her steadfast determination to change her life despite the myriad setbacks she encounters. This Is All I Got is a rare feat of reporting and a dramatic story of survival. Sandler’s candid and revealing account also exposes the murky boundaries between a journalist and her subject when it becomes impossible to remain a dispassionate observer. She has written a powerful and unforgettable indictment of a system that is often indifferent to the needs of those it serves, and that sometimes seems designed to fail. Praise for This Is All I Got “A rich, sociologically valuable work that’s more gripping, and more devastating, than fiction.”—Booklist “Vivid, heartbreaking. . . . Readers will be moved by this harrowing and impassioned call for change.”—Publishers Weekly “A closely observed chronicle . . . Sandler displays her journalistic talent by unerringly presenting this dire situation. . . . An impressive blend of dispassionate reporting, pungent condemnation of public welfare, and gritty humanity.” —Kirkus Reviews

A major scientific revolution has begun, a new paradigm that rivals Darwin's theory in importance. At its heart is the discovery of the order that lies deep within the most complex of systems, from the origin of life, to the workings of giant corporations, to the rise and fall of great civilizations. And more than anyone else, this revolution is the work of one man, Stuart Kauffman, a MacArthur Fellow and visionary pioneer of the new science of complexity. Now, in At Home in the Universe, Kauffman brilliantly weaves together the excitement of intellectual discovery and a fertile mix of insights to give the general reader a fascinating look at this new science--and at the forces for order that lie at the edge of chaos. We all know of instances of spontaneous order in nature--an oil droplet in water forms a sphere, snowflakes have a six-fold symmetry. What we are only now discovering, Kauffman says, is that the range of spontaneous order is enormously greater than we had supposed. Indeed, self-organization is a great undiscovered principle of nature. But how does this spontaneous order arise? Kauffman contends that complexity itself triggers self-organization, or what he calls "order for free," that if enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity--a living cell. Kauffman uses the analogy of a thousand buttons on a rug--join two buttons randomly with thread, then another two, and so on. At first, you have isolated pairs; later, small clusters; but suddenly at around the 500th repetition, a remarkable transformation occurs--much like the phase transition when water abruptly turns to ice--and the buttons link up in one giant network. Likewise, life may have originated when the mix of different molecules in the primordial soup passed a certain level of complexity and self-organized into living entities (if so, then life is not a highly improbable chance event, but almost inevitable). Kauffman uses the basic insight of "order for free" to illuminate a staggering range of phenomena. We see how a single-celled embryo can grow to a highly complex organism with over two hundred different cell types. We learn how the science of complexity extends Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection: that self-organization, selection, and chance are the engines of the biosphere. And we gain insights into biotechnology, the stunning magic of the new frontier of genetic engineering--generating trillions of novel molecules to find new drugs, vaccines, enzymes, biosensors, and more. Indeed, Kauffman shows that ecosystems, economic systems, and even cultural systems may all evolve according to similar general laws, that tissues and terra cotta evolve in similar ways. And finally, there is a profoundly spiritual element to Kauffman's thought. If, as he argues, life were bound to arise, not as an incalculably improbable accident, but as an expected fulfillment of the natural order, then we truly are at home in the universe. Kauffman's earlier volume, The Origins of Order, written for specialists, received lavish praise. Stephen Jay Gould called it "a landmark and a classic." And Nobel Laureate Philip Anderson wrote that "there are few people in this world who ever ask the right questions of science, and they are the ones who affect its future most profoundly. Stuart Kauffman is one of these." In At Home in the Universe, this visionary thinker takes you along as he explores new insights into the nature of life.

A gripping insight into the power of sport to change lives. Every four years the soccer World Cup unites people all over the globe to watch their favourite team battle it out to make the final. But there's another World Cup that isn't quite as glamorous: the Homeless World Cup (HWC). In 2008 award-winning author and filmmaker Dave Bidini accompanied the poor and dispossessed players of Homeless Team Canada to the HWC in Melbourne. What Bidini found was the ultimate underdog sporting event, teeming with stories of humanity and more relevant to our times than any modern big-ticket spectacle. Through seeing the players' disappointments, frustrations, joys and triumphs, Bidini understands the true meaning of this tournament. He sees firsthand the power of sport to transform the lives of those on the edge – how the decision to play this game can mean the difference between survival or a life of addiction, poverty or crime. Home and Away offers a powerful look at the homeless and disadvantaged, from the barrios of Mexico City and the shanties of West Africa to the streets of North America, Europe and Australia. Whether you're a sports fanatic or a keen observer of human nature, you'll never watch a soccer game in the same way again.

"An invaluable guide for beginning bakers." –Sam Sifton, The New York Times In 2009, journalist Samuel Fromartz was offered the assignment of a lifetime: to travel to France to work in a boulangerie. So began his quest to hone not just his homemade baguette—which later beat out professional bakeries to win the “Best Baguette of D.C.”—but his knowledge of bread, from seed to table. For the next four years, Fromartz traveled across the United States and Europe, perfecting his sourdough in California, his whole grain rye in Berlin, and his country wheat in the South of France. Along the way, he met historians, millers, farmers, wheat geneticists, sourdough biochemists, and everyone in between, learning about the history of breadmaking, the science of fermentation, and more. The result is an informative yet personal account of bread and breadbaking, complete with detailed recipes, tips, and beautiful photographs. Entertaining and inspiring, this book will be a touchstone for a new generation of bakers and a must-read for anyone who wants to take a deeper look at this deceptively ordinary, exceptionally delicious staple: handmade bread.

A haunting memoir of war, genocide, displacement, and a daughter’s search for the literary works of her mother’s murdered twin. Grieving the death of her mother in 2013, author Isa Milman embarked on a heart-wrenching journey to unravel a family mystery—the whereabouts of her aunt’s long-lost poems, published in Poland in the early 1930s—which evolved into a broader investigation of her family’s life before, during, and after the Holocaust. This powerful memoir chronicles a lesser-known chapter of the Second World War through the story of two sisters: Sabina, Isa’s mother, who survived the war, and Basia, Sabina’s twin, who did not. Exploring themes of loss and displacement, regeneration and resilience, Isa discovers how her own story is woven into the immense yet intricate tapestry of the Jewish experience. As she delves into her family’s history, accompanied by her husband, a native British Columbian, she travels to contemporary Poland, Ukraine, and Germany, and tries to reconcile her shifting appreciation of people and place, in a world where anti-Semitism and other forms of extremism are on the rise once again.

Tackling some of the world’s most profound questions through the intimate lens of fatherhood, Bayo Akomolafe embarks on a journey of discovery as he maps the contours of the spaces between himself and his three-year-old daughter, Alethea. In a narrative that manages to be both intricate and unguarded, he discovers that something as commonplace as becoming a father is a cosmic event of unprecedented proportions. Using this realization as a touchstone, he is led to consider the strangeness of his own soul, contemplate the myths and rituals of modernity, ask questions about food and justice, ponder what it means to be human, evaluate what we can do about climate change, and wonder what our collective yearnings for a better world tell us about ourselves. These Wilds Beyond Our Fences is a passionate attempt to make sense of our disconnection in a world where it is easy to feel untethered and lost. It is a father’s search for meaning, for a place of belonging, and for reassurance that the world will embrace and support our children once we are gone.