Nomadland Surviving America In The Twenty First Century

The inspiration for Chloé Zhao's 2020 Golden Lion award-winning film starring Frances McDormand. "People who thought the 2008 financial collapse was over a long time ago need to meet the people Jessica Bruder got to know in this scorching, beautifully written, vivid, disturbing (and occasionally wryly funny) book." —Rebecca Solnit From the beet fields of North Dakota to the campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older adults. These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans, forming a growing community of nomads. Nomadland tells a revelatory tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one which foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, it celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, but have not given up hope.

Are you sick of the rat race, working at a job you hate and still just barely surviving? Are you ready to do it for the rest of your life? Or have you been laid-off or downsized and can't afford to live anymore. If so, this book is for you. In it, I give detailed directions on how to get rid of your rent or mortgage payment and live in a vehicle. That way you can get out of debt, save money, travel and live basically free. You can live on so little money, you can tell your boss to "Take this job and shove it!!" Sound good? Let's get started!

“[A] fascinating debut . . . documenting the lives of teenage runaways who traverse America as part of a freewheeling counterculture.” —Publishers Weekly At age twenty-two, writer Chris Urquhart left a life of middle-class comfort to document the lives of these young nomads for a magazine feature. Captivated, she followed them for three more years. In honest prose interspersed with photographs portraying the grimy beauty of nomadic life, Dirty Kids tells the story of how Urquhart lived alongside runaways, crust punks, and dropouts, hippies, Deadheads, and Rainbows in an attempt to belong in their world. But the road took its toll, and along the way, Urquhart found suffering alongside the freedom—mental health issues, substance abuse, and fears of violence marred her journey. Despite all that, the warm, welcoming family of travelers and their radically alternative culture of sharing, generosity, and non-capitalistic collaboration forever changed her outlook on life and her understanding of freedom. “An illuminating and memorable twenty-first-century journey. From this angle, Burning Man looks bourgeois.” —Ted Conover, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing “Brings readers face-to-face with the bliss of freedom, the terror of loneliness, and the hard but true realities of life on the road—and on the rails—in modern day Babylon.” —Peter Conners, author of Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead “Urquhart shows us a seldom-glimpsed slice of America with poetic flair and journalistic objectivity.” —Ken Ilgunas, award-winning author of Trespassing Across America

This “marvelously absorbing” book is “a walk on the wild side of words and ventures into the zone where language and mathematics intersect” (San Jose Mercury News). A former Wall Street Journal reporter and NPR regular, Stefan Fatsis recounts his remarkable rise through the ranks of elite Scrabble players while exploring the game’s strange, potent hold over them—and him. At least thirty million American homes have a Scrabble set—but the game’s most talented competitors inhabit a sphere far removed from the masses of “living room players.” Theirs is a surprisingly diverse subculture whose stars include a vitamin-popping standup comic; a former bank teller whose intestinal troubles earned him the nickname “G.I. Joel”; a burly, unemployed African American from Baltimore’s inner city; the three-time national champion who plays according to Zen principles; and the author himself, who over the course of the book is transformed from a curious reporter to a confirmed Scrabble nut. Fatsis begins by haunting the gritty corner of a Greenwich Village park where pickup Scrabble games can be found whenever weather permits. His curiosity soon morphs into compulsion, as he sets about memorizing thousands of obscure words and fills his evenings with solo Scrabble played on his living room floor. Before long he finds himself at tournaments, socializing—and competing—with Scrabble’s elite. But this book is about more than hardcore Scrabblers, for the game yields insights into realms as disparate as linguistics, psychology, and mathematics. Word Freak extends its reach even farther, pondering the light Scrabble throws on such notions as brilliance, memory, competition, failure, and hope. It is a geography of obsession that celebrates the uncanny powers locked in all of us, “a can’t-put-it-down narrative that dances between memoir and reportage” (Los Angeles Times). “Funny, thoughtful, character-rich, unchallengeably winning writing.” —The Atlantic Monthly This edition includes a new afterword by the author.

A New York Times Notable Book Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event. The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity. There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe. A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

Skins is Adrian C. Louis's realistic novel of life on Pine Ridge Reservation, the story of two brothers--one a rez cop, the other an alcoholic--and their relationship with each other, with their people, with their environment.

Deep in the heart of Africa is Wakanda, a technologically advanced civilization of great power and mystery. During the last ten centuries, as European colonial powers spread their guns, armies, and undisputed domination throughout the continent, Wakanda has stood alone as an unconquerable land inhabited by undefeatable warriors. Governing this nation is a lineage of warrior-kings possessing enhanced speed, strength, and agility. Today, T'Challa is the latest in this famed family line, the great hero known worldwide as the Black Panther. Despite the futile defeats of the past, outsiders are once more assembling to invade Wakanda and plunder its riches. Leading this brutal assault is Klaw, a deadly assassin with the blood of T'Challa's murdered father on his hands. Klaw brings with him a powerful army of super-powered mercenaries, all hell-bent on raining death and destruction on this pristine land. Even with Wakanda's might and his own superhuman skills, can the Black Panther prevail against such a massive invading force? Collects Black Panther #1-6 and Fantastic Four #52-53.

They Have a Word for It takes the reader to the far corners of the globe to discover words and phrases for which there are not equivalents in English. From the North Pole to New Guinea, from Easter Island to Tibet, Howard Rheingold explores more than forty familiar and obscure languages to discover genuinely useful (rather than simply odd) words that can open up new ways of understanding and experiencing life. --Sarabande Books.