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Armchair Travel December 2017
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| Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz ChastIf you love Manhattan or just want to get to know it better, try the latest book by New Yorker cartoonist and bestselling author Roz Chast. Readers will find a quirky, fun illustrated tribute to the Big Apple that discusses everything from empty subway cars (avoid them) to the grid pattern that makes up most of the island. Written to help her suburban daughter, who was moving to Manhattan for college, Going into Town is a lighthearted, informative look at Chast's favorite city. |
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From here to eternity : traveling the world to find the good death
by Caitlin Doughty
Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Here to Eternity is an immersive global journey that introduces compelling, powerful rituals almost entirely unknown in America. In rural Indonesia, she watches a man clean and dress his grandfather’s mummified body, which has resided in the family home for two years. In La Paz, she meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and in Tokyo she encounters the Japanese kotsuage ceremony, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones’ bones from cremation ashes. With boundless curiosity and gallows humor, Doughty vividly describes decomposed bodies and investigates the world’s funerary history. She introduces deathcare innovators researching body composting and green burial, and examines how varied traditions, from Mexico’s Días de los Muertos to Zoroastrian sky burial help us see our own death customs in a new light.
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South and West : from a notebook
by Joan Didion
Two excerpts from never-before-seen notebooks by the National Book Award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking offer insights into her literary mind and process and includes notes on her Sacramento upbringing, her life in the Gulf states, her views on prominent locals and her experiences during a formative Rolling Stone assignment.
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North Korea undercover : inside the world's most secret state
by John Sweeney
"North Korea is like no other tyranny on earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and big brother is always watching: it is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Award-winning BBC journalist John Sweeney is one of the few foreign journalists to have witnessed the devastating reality of life in the controversial and isolated nation of North Korea, having entered the country undercover, posing as a university professor with a group of students from the London School of Economics. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ--the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins--are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits. State spies are everywhere, ready to punish disloyalty at the slightest sign of discontent. Drawing on his own experiences and his extensive interviews with defectors and other key witnesses, Sweeney's North Korea Undercover pulls back the curtain, providing a rare insight into life there today while examining the country's troubled history and addressing important questions about its uncertain future."--Book jacket
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| Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom... by Blaine HardenWith North Korea so much in the news of late, people may wonder what life is like in this closed-off, authoritarian country. You can read the bestselling Escape from Camp 14 for a glimpse. Telling the dramatic story of Shin Dong-hyuk, who was born in one of North Korea's infamous political prisons and is one of the very few people to have escaped, the book describes brutal conditions, where affection is virtually nonexistent and torture, beatings, and starvation are routine. Follow Shin Dong-hyuk as he makes it to South Korea, China, and the U.S. and deals with culture shock. |
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| Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki KimThis gripping book reads a bit like a dystopian novel as it vividly depicts life in North Korea. Suki Kim, an award-winning author who was born in South Korea but has lived in the United States since she was a teen, took a job teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during what turned out to be the last six months of Kim Jong Il's reign. She watched every word she said, kept notes on a secret flash drive, and tried to connect with her students, young men who believed all the propaganda they'd been served and had little idea of what the rest of the world is like. Kim's well-written, thought-provoking examination of this closed-off land offers a rare look at the elite of the country. |
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| The Girl With Seven Names: Escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee with David JohnBorn in North Korea near the border with China, Hyeonseo Lee had a relatively happy childhood (her family had enough money for food and some extras), but things changed when her father died. When she first secretly crossed the border at 17, she planned to return to her family -- however, when that proved impossible, she lived in China for years, taking new names for safety reasons, before finally making it to South Korea at 28. Later, she helped her family escape...but they faced many barriers. The presenter of a popular TED talk, Lee offers extraordinary insight into both North Korea and China in her compelling book. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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