Silica Stories

Silica Stories
Author: Christina De La Rocha
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2017-03-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319540548

Do you know silica, the tetrahedra of silicon and oxygen constituting the crystals of New Agers and the desiccant in a box of new shoes? It's no mere mundane mineral. As chemically reacting silicate rocks, silica set off the chain of events known as the origin of life. As biomineralized opal, it is the cell wall, skeleton, spicules, and scales of organisms ornamenting numerous lobes of the tree of life. Cryptocrystalline silica made into stone tools helped drive the evolution of our hands and our capability for complex grammar, music, and mathematics. As quartz crystals, silica is impressively electric and ubiquitous in modern technology (think sonar, radios, telephones, ultrasound, and cheap but precise watches). Silica is inescapable when we take a drink or mow the lawn and it has already started to save the Earth from the carbon dioxide we're spewing into the atmosphere. This book tells these scientific tales and more, to give dear, modest silica its due.

The Truth About Lorin Jones

The Truth About Lorin Jones
Author: Alison Lurie
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2012-11-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1453271228

In this comedy by a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a biographer out to vindicate a neglected female artist learns that the truth is never tidy. Polly Alter is through with men. Recovering from her divorce, she has taken a year off from her museum job to write a biography of Lorin Jones, a sensitive painter who died young and nearly forgotten. Polly is determined to bring the artist the public acclaim she deserves, making up for the neglect and exploitation Lorin suffered from the men in her life. The only problem with the story of Lorin’s victimhood is that it may not be true. And as Polly wades deeper into her research, growing more attached to her subject, and more lost in the world of two decades past, she begins to realize that no life story is as simple as a biographer might wish. The National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs writes a daring and “relentless comedy” that novelist Edmund White calls “one of the most entertaining novels I've read in a long time” (The New York Times). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

A Time to Stir

A Time to Stir
Author: Paul Cronin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 711
Release: 2018-01-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231544332

For seven days in April 1968, students occupied five buildings on the campus of Columbia University to protest a planned gymnasium in a nearby Harlem park, links between the university and the Vietnam War, and what they saw as the university’s unresponsive attitude toward their concerns. Exhilarating to some and deeply troubling to others, the student protests paralyzed the university, grabbed the world’s attention, and inspired other uprisings. Fifty years after the events, A Time to Stir captures the reflections of those who participated in and witnessed the Columbia rebellion. With more than sixty essays from members of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the Students’ Afro-American Society, faculty, undergraduates who opposed the protests, “outside agitators,” and members of the New York Police Department, A Time to Stir sheds light on the politics, passions, and ideals of the 1960s. Moving beyond accounts from the student movement’s white leadership, this book presents the perspectives of black students, who were grappling with their uneasy integration into a supposedly liberal campus, as well as the views of women, who began to question their second-class status within the protest movement and society at large. A Time to Stir also speaks to the complicated legacy of the uprising. For many, the events at Columbia inspired a lifelong dedication to social causes, while for others they signaled the beginning of the chaos that would soon engulf the left. Taken together, these reflections present a nuanced and moving portrait that reflects the sense of possibility and excess that characterized the 1960s.

Making Home in Havana

Making Home in Havana
Author: Cecelia Elisabeth Burke Lawless
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2002
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780813530949

Havana is a city that rarely fails to captivate. But much of the unique beauty and culture of this historic city is rapidly disappearing. As Cuban society finds itself at a crossroads, Havana is more than ever a city on the edge, for although frozen in time as a consequence of Fidel Castro's revolution, it has certainly not been well preserved. Time, climate, and neglect have eroded a rare architectural legacy, making the need to document this heritage even more pressing than ever before. Making Home in Havana is an elegant book of photographs and testimonies, recording, questioning, and evoking the meaning of place -- in particular, the meaning of home. The combination of fine photography and the words of residents of former palaces, humble apartments, and other dwellings offer us an irresistible portrait of Havana that might otherwise be lost forever. Vincenzo Pietropaolo and Cecelia Lawless have made numerous visits to Havana in order to fully understand and convey the essence of what home means to the inhabitants of the dwellings of the El Vedado and Centro Habana neighborhoods. Together, they--and we--explore how a building becomes a home through its human history as well as its architectural features. With some renovation already underway in colonial Havana, they concentrate on largely unexplored and unrecognized sections that continue to fall into ruin. The intimacy of their connection with the buildings and people offers us a rare combination of documentary realism and high art. Buildings and people speak their histories to us in classic humanistic style. Residents of Havana tell their stories of lifelong efforts to turn decay into beauty, while the photographer's evocative pictures enable us to feel exactly what they are talking about -- a creation of time and space called home.

White Men Aren't

White Men Aren't
Author: Thomas DiPiero
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2002-09-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

DIVA critical psychoanalytic account of white masculinity, which argues that it is incorrect to naturalize the power of masculinity and offers an alternative account./div

The House Tells the Story

The House Tells the Story
Author: Adam Van Doren
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781567925425

Pre-eminent historian David McCullough and noted artist Adam Van Doren unite for an excursion to the celebrated homes of fifteen American presidents, past and present.

Up Against the Ivy Wall

Up Against the Ivy Wall
Author: Jerry L. Avorn
Publisher: New York : Atheneum Press, 1969 [c1968]
Total Pages: 350
Release: 1969
Genre: Radicalism
ISBN:

A history of the Columbia crisis.