Somewhere in the Unknown World

Somewhere in the Unknown World
Author: Kao Kalia Yang
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1250296862

From “an exceptional storyteller,” Somewhere in the Unknown World is a collection of powerful stories of refugees who have found new lives in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet. All over this country, there are refugees. But beyond the headlines, few know who they are, how they live, or what they have lost. Although Minnesota is not known for its diversity, the state has welcomed more refugees per capita than any other, from Syria to Bosnia, Thailand to Liberia. Now, with nativism on the rise, Kao Kalia Yang—herself a Hmong refugee—has gathered stories of the stateless who today call the Twin Cities home. Here are people who found the strength and courage to rebuild after leaving all they hold dear. Awo and her mother, who escaped from Somalia, reunite with her father on the phone every Saturday, across the span of continents and decades. Tommy, born in Minneapolis to refugees from Cambodia, cannot escape the war that his parents carry inside. As Afghani flees the reach of the Taliban, he seeks at every stop what he calls a certificate of his humanity. Mr. Truong brings pho from Vietnam to Frogtown in St. Paul, reviving a crumbling block as well as his own family. In Yang’s exquisite, necessary telling, these fourteen stories for refugee journeys restore history and humanity to America's strangers and redeem its long tradition of welcome.

An Unknown World

An Unknown World
Author: Jacob Needleman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2012-09-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1101601310

What is the purpose of life on Earth? Philosopher Jacob Needleman frames man's role on the planet in a completely new and fresh way, moving beyond the usual environmental concerns to reveal how the care and maintenance of a world is something vital and basic to our existence as authentic human beings. In some of his most deeply affecting writing, Needleman draws on his childhood experiences with a terminally ill friend whose impending death forces the young boys to face questions of the meaning of existence at an early age—questions that Needleman carried with him in his explorations of science and philosophy throughout his career as a scholar of religions. The conclusions that he reaches will give all of us a new sense of the purpose of our lives and the planet we live on.

Heroes of an Unknown World

Heroes of an Unknown World
Author: Ayize Jama-Everett
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2023-02-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 161873198X

In the final novel of the Liminals, a found family of Black superheroes has one last chance to save the world. After traveling back in time to rescue his fostered daughter, Taggert has returned to the present and found himself in his favorite place: up against the wall. But the world they’ve returned to is not the one they left: everything is slightly grayer, the music is boring, joy is just out of reach. The liminals’ entropic enemies, the Alters, are trying to bring about the end of the world by sucking the life—literally—out of enough people to tip the balance their way. Traveling from Jamaica to London to Indonesia to the heart of the whirlwind in the desert at the heart of all deserts, Taggert and his found family of liminals and supporters have to find a way to bring back the joy before they’re all ground down into the gray dust.

The Unknown World of the Mobile Home

The Unknown World of the Mobile Home
Author: John Fraser Hart
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2002-08-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0801875838

An in-depth look at the history and culture of mobile homes in the United States. In American popular imagination, the mobile home evokes images of cramped interiors, cheap materials, and occupants too poor or unsavory to live anywhere else. Since the 1940s and ‘50s, however, mobile home manufacturers have improved standards of construction and now present them as an affordable alternative to conventional site-built homes. Today one of every fourteen Americans lives in a mobile home. In The Unknown World of the Mobile Home authors John Fraser Hart, Michelle J. Rhodes, and John T. Morgan illuminate the history and culture of these often misunderstood domiciles. They describe early mobile homes, which were trailers designed to be pulled behind automobiles and which were more often than not poorly constructed and unequal to the needs of those who used them. During the 1970s, however, Congress enacted federal standards for the quality and safety of mobile homes, which led to innovation in design and the production of much more attractive and durable models. These models now comply with local building codes and many are designed to look like conventional houses. As a result, one out every five new single-family housing units purchased in the United States is a mobile home, sited everywhere from the conventional trailer park to custom-designed “estates” aimed at young couples and retirees. Despite all these changes in manufacture and design, even the most immobile mobile homes are still sold, financed, regulated, and taxed as vehicles. With a wealth of detail and illustrations, The Unknown World of the Mobile Home provides readers with an in-depth look into this variation on the American dream. “A clear, concise, and innovative look at the history, the economics, and the politics of the mobile home. The authors reveal the inner workings of mobile home living by drawing upon a wide variety of sources, from industry data to interviews conducted at mobile home parks across the country. Further, they explore new types of mobile home communities—those assembled for workers at meat-processing centers in southwest Kansas, for example—that complicate the familiar image of the mobile home park as retirement village. The ideas presented in this book provide a solid starting point for many detailed studies on this important topic.” —Karl Raitz, University of Kentucky, author of The National Road

Into the Dangerous World

Into the Dangerous World
Author: Julie Chibbaro
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2015-08-18
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0698170466

At a family meeting, Ror declares her purpose: She is an artist. But she doesn’t really know what that means. Raised on a commune, she’s never attended a day of school, and has seen little of the outside world. What she knows best is drawing. To her, it’s like breathing; it’s how she makes sense of the world. When her father torches the commune—and himself—Ror’s life changes. She, her mother and sister end up in a homeless residence in Manhattan, where she runs into trouble—and love—with Trey, the leader of Noise Ink, a graffiti crew. On the city’s streets, and in its museums and galleries, Ror finds herself pulled in different directions. Her father wanted her to make classic art. Noise Ink insists she stay within their lines. Her art teacher urges her to go to college. What does she want? Ror’s journey is a seamless blend of words and pictures, cinematic in its scope--a sharp-edged, indelible work of art that will live inside your head.

We Have No Idea

We Have No Idea
Author: Jorge Cham
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0735211523

Prepare to learn everything we still don’t know about our strange and mysterious universe Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore —there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the universe: the enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists, including: * Why does the universe have a speed limit? * Why aren't we all made of antimatter? * What (or who) is attacking Earth with tiny, superfast particles? * What is dark matter, and why does it keep ignoring us? It turns out the universe is full of weird things that don't make any sense. But Cham and Whiteson make a compelling case that the questions we can't answer are as interesting as the ones we can. This fully illustrated introduction to the biggest mysteries in physics also helpfully demystifies many complicated things we do know about, from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes. With equal doses of humor and delight, Cham and Whiteson invite us to see the universe as a possibly boundless expanse of uncharted territory that's still ours to explore.

The Liminal War

The Liminal War
Author: Ayize Jama-Everett
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2015-05-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1618731025

In the third Liminal Novel Taggert's adopted daughter disappears so he only has one option: find her. When Taggert's adopted daughter goes missing he suspects the hand of an old enemy. He gathers friends, family, and even those who don't quite trust that he has left his violent past behind. But their search leads them to an unexpected place, the past, and the consequences of their journey have a price that is higher than they can afford.

Quest into the Unknown

Quest into the Unknown
Author: Tony Howard
Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing
Total Pages: 805
Release: 2019-04-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1911342843

We are all climbing where we are and with the gear we use in no small part due to Tony Howard's quest for adventure. Tony Howard rose to fame in 1965 as a member of a group of young climbers from northern England who made the first British ascent of Norway's Troll Wall; a climb described by Joe Brown as, 'One of the greatest ever achievements by British rock climbers'. Tony went on to design the modern sit harness, now used worldwide by most climbers. He founded the company Troll Climbing Equipment but never stopped exploring. Quest into the Unknown is his story. Tony has dedicated his life to travelling the world in search of unclimbed rock faces and remote trekking adventures. The scale of his travels is vast: he has visited all of the North African countries, much of the Arab land of the Middle East, the mountainous regions of Scandinavia, Canada and the rocky spine of the Americas, the Himalaya, remote Indian provinces, South East Asia, Madagascar, South Georgia and Antarctica. This book, the last word in adventure travel, takes the reader from Tony's youth spent developing the crags of the English Peak District, via whaling ships in the Southern Ocean, thousand-mile canoe trips in the Canadian Arctic, living amongst the Bedouin in the rocky mountains of Jordan, to the isolated opium tribes of Thailand. Tony Howard's Quest into the Unknown is the jaw-dropping account of a life of adventure that is the very definition of true exploration.

Into the Unknown

Into the Unknown
Author: Ian Trafford
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0143775138

A personal account of WWI from the diaries of a Gisborne farm boy, shaped into a gripping narrative by the diarist’s grandson 100 years later. Follow Alick as he moves from his last night on the farm in early 1916, through enshipment and training, then off to the battle fields of France and Belgium, occupied Germany and back home. His treasured diaries covered the tedium, the mud, the fear and sorrow, the discomfort, the periods of leave and the letters from those back home. See the war unfold through Alick’s eyes and learn about his and his companions' attitudes to the army, to female company, to the enemy soldiers, to the hospitality provided by people under pressure, to the war itself. And after the drama and tragedy of war, comes the return home and the efforts required to make a living while remaining steadfastly silent about the traumas of those terrible years - an unseen fight that continued and affected generations to come.

The Life of an Unknown

The Life of an Unknown
Author: Alain Corbin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780231118408

Corbin recreates the life and world of a man about whom nothing is known except for his entries in the civil registries and historical knowledge about the times in which he lived: Louis-Francois Pinagot, a forester and clog maker who lived during the heart of the nineteenth century--the age of Romanticism, of Hugo and Berlioz--from the Napoleonic Wars to the Third Republic.