The Passion Project

How modernist women writers used biographical writing to resist their exclusion from literary history It’s impossible, now, to think of modernism without thinking about gender, sexuality, and the diverse movers and shakers of the early twentieth century. But this was not always so. The Passion Projects examines biographical projects that modernist women writers undertook to resist the exclusion of their friends, colleagues, lovers, and companions from literary history. Many of these works were vibrant efforts of modernist countermemory and counterhistory that became casualties in a midcentury battle for literary legitimacy, but that now add a new dimension to our appreciation of such figures as Radclyffe Hall, Gertrude Stein, Hope Mirrlees, and Sylvia Beach, among many others. Melanie Micir explores an extensive body of material, including Sylvia Townsend Warner’s carefullly annotated letters to her partner Valentine Ackland, Djuna Barnes’s fragmented drafts about the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Margaret Anderson’s collection of modernist artifacts, and Virginia Woolf’s joke biography of her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West, the novel Orlando. Whether published in encoded desire or squirreled away in intimate archives, these “passion projects” recorded life then in order to summon an audience now, and stand as important predecessors of queer and feminist recovery projects that have shaped the contemporary understanding of the field. Arguing for the importance of biography, The Passion Projects shows how women turned to this genre in the early twentieth century to preserve their lives and communities for future generations to discover.

Finalist for the 2018 Minnesota Book Award A graphic designer’s search for inspiration leads to a cache of letters and the mystery of one man’s fate during World War II. Seeking inspiration for a new font design in an antique store in small-town Stillwater, Minnesota, graphic designer Carolyn Porter stumbled across a bundle of letters and was immediately drawn to their beautifully expressive pen-and-ink handwriting. She could not read the letters—they were in French—but she noticed all of them had been signed by a man named Marcel and mailed from Berlin to his family in France during the middle of World War II. As Carolyn grappled with designing the font, she decided to have one of Marcel’s letters translated. Reading it opened a portal to a different time, and what began as mere curiosity quickly became an obsession with finding out why the letter writer, Marcel Heuzé, had been in Berlin, how his letters came to be on sale in a store halfway around the world, and, most importantly, whether he ever returned to his beloved wife and daughters after the war. Marcel’s Letters is the incredible story of Carolyn’s increasingly desperate search to uncover the mystery of one man’s fate during WWII, seeking answers across Germany, France, and the United States. Simultaneously, she continues to work on what would become the acclaimed P22 Marcel font, immortalizing the man and his letters that waited almost seventy years to be reunited with his family.

The brilliant creator of NPR's Planet Money podcast and award-winning New Yorker staff writer explains our current economy: laying out its internal logic and revealing the transformative hope it offers for millions of people to thrive as they never have before. Contrary to what you may have heard, the middle class is not dying and robots are not stealing our jobs. In fact, writes Adam Davidson—one of our leading public voices on economic issues—the twenty-first-century economic paradigm offers new ways of making money, fresh paths toward professional fulfillment, and unprecedented opportunities for curious, ambitious individuals to combine the things they love with their careers. Drawing on the stories of average people doing exactly this—an accountant overturning his industry, a sweatshop owner's daughter fighting for better working conditions, an Amish craftsman meeting the technological needs of Amish farmers—as well as the latest academic research, Davidson shows us how the twentieth-century economy of scale has given way in this century to an economy of passion. He makes clear, too, that though the adjustment has brought measures of dislocation, confusion, and even panic, these are most often the result of a lack of understanding. The Passion Economy delineates the ground rules of the new economy, and armed with these, we begin to see how we can succeed in it according to its own terms—intimacy, insight, attention, automation, and, of course, passion. An indispensable road map and a refreshingly optimistic take on our economic future.

Are You Ready for a Passionate Life? Life passion expert and popular personal growth blogger Barrie Davenport leads you on a creative journey of personal discovery. Inspired by her own passion search and coaching work with clients, The 52-Week Life Passion Project is filled with lessons and actions to help you uncover and live your life passion. It's your weekly personal coaching session, leading you on the path from the life you have to the one you dream of living-a life that is . . . + aligned with the person you want to be + balanced and prioritized according to your values and desires + centered around purpose and meaning + infused with excitement, joy and passion Each lesson leads you toward deeper self-awareness and increased clarity around the person you are, what it is you want for your life, exactly how to acquire it, and then concludes with specific weekly actions for your next steps. It sequentially guides you in creating a realistic plan to uncover and live your life passion each day in a way that works best for your life!

Includes book club favorites reader's guide.

#1 international bestseller Publishers Weekly bestseller The Globe and Mail (Toronto) The Toronto Star bestseller The Vancouver Sun bestseller From Neil Pasricha—New York Times, million-copy bestselling author of The Book of Awesome series and The Happiness Equation, thought leader for the next generation, and one of the most popular TED speakers in the world—comes a revelatory and inspiring book that will change the way we view failure and help us build resilience. We are lucky. For most of us, famine, plague, economic depression, and other life-threatening catastrophes are the stuff of history books. We’re living in an era with the highest-ever rates of longevity, education, and wealth. Cars drive us home as our phones entertain us before we arrive to food delivered to the front door. We have it all! But there’s just one side effect. We no longer have the tools to handle failure...or even perceived failure. When we fall, we lie on the sidewalk crying. When we spill, we splatter. When we crack, we shatter. We are turning into an army of porcelain dolls. A rude email from the boss means calling in sick. Only two likes on our post means we don’t have friends. Cell phones show us we’re never good enough. Yesterday’s butterflies are tomorrow’s panic attacks. Record numbers of students have clinical anxiety. And what about depression, loneliness, and suicide? All rising! What do we desperately need to learn? RESILIENCE. And we need to learn it fast. Read You Are Awesome to learn: • The single word that keeps your options open after failure • What every commencement speech gets wrong • 3 ways to dramatically accelerate your ability to learn and adapt • The 2-minute morning practice that helps eliminate worry • Why you need an Untouchable Day (and how to get one) • and much, much more... Because the truth is, you really are awesome.

A colorful compendium of little white lies, based on the award-winning, “bitingly honest” blog (Imprint). From the diet you’re going to start tomorrow to that call you were about to make when something (anything) else came up—life is full of little lies that get us through the day. With Daily Dishonesty, designer and blogger Lauren Hom pays homage to the (mostly) innocent foibles that make us human. With 150+ hilariously common lies, beautifully illustrated by Hom, Daily Dishonesty touches on topics from breakups, friendship, and growing up to slacking off and guilty pleasures, in hand-lettered mantras that are all too honest about our untruths. Praise for the Daily Dishonesty blog “Simply wonderful!” —SwissMiss “Cleverly and adorably displays lies.” —Complex Magazine “Really inspiring for those of you who want to dabble in hand lettering.” —Miss Moss

Stargazer, astrologist, tea-leaf reader… Lady Geneva Dorn has heard the disdainful descriptions bandied about for years. In truth, she is a scientist, an astronomer to be exact. And she is on the cusp of an incredible discovery—a new comet. Assassin, hero, soldier for hire… All true to some extent, but Selwyn McKelvey prefers the term opportunist. He’s brought down villains and despots. Now he’s ready to plant roots at a peaceful cottage by the sea. He just has one last criminal to eliminate. Only the brash, beautiful, extremely intelligent Lady Dorn hardly matches the description of a hardened murderess he was given. Something very inconvenient occurs around her. He develops a conscience… and a weak spot for her sharp mind and gorgeous body. In order to prove her theory—and finally gain recognition for her work—Geneva has to arrive in Scotland by summer solstice, only one week away. She doesn’t trust Wyn as far as she can throw him (which wouldn’t be far at all), but she needs an escort and he is her only option. It seems more than one faction of the extremely competitive Royal Society is out to steal her research and shut her up for good. But on whose side will Wyn fall?