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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Jason Straight has commented on (12) products
Women Writers of the Middle Ages A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua Dagger 203 to Marguerite Porete Dagger 1310
by
Peter Dronke
Jason Straight
, February 14, 2011
Expanding the Western canon. Dronke's classic book is as important and timely now as ever. Somewhere between an anthology and a scholarly survey, Dronke discusses the writings of women from the 3rd-14th centuries. This book avoids the pitfall of artificially creating a genre of "women's literature" but rather considers women writers as creative and innovative authors. This book is essentially for anyone interested in Medieval history, women's history, or western literature. Dronke's book is a powerful indictment of the patriarchal institution that is the Western Literary Canon by showing that women writers should be included, not for the sake of diversity, but because their works can stand on their own merits alongside the greatest works of male geniuses.
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Half of a Yellow Sun
by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Jason Straight
, February 14, 2011
This book is a book about real people who never existed. Adichie is careful to show us that the characters in this book are real flesh and blood people, they eat, they drink, they have sex, they argue, they make mistakes, they do the things that real people do. The book takes a microscopic view of individual struggles and suffering withing a struggle too large and complex to admit clear understanding. A man trying to cross a border to bury his mother when 1,000,000s of soldiers and refugees are fighting over and crossing that exact border makes the macro comprehensible by the micro. What makes this book most powerful is that while it is an African book, a Nigerian book, an Igbo book--and in large part a book of one generation coming to terms with the history of a past generation--the events portrayed could have happened anywhere. It is a universal story despite being a specifically Igbo story.
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Warmth Of Other Suns The Epic Story Of Americas Great Migration
by
Isabel Wilkerson
Jason Straight
, October 30, 2010
An instant classic. Wilkerson using the lives of 3 different people to stand for the millions of African Americans who took part in America's greatest internal migration. Both intensely personal and full of scholarly erudition, you won't want to put this book down and the people you encounter in it will stay with you. This is by far one of the best books of 2010.
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When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge
by
K. David Harrison
Jason Straight
, August 23, 2010
Built up over tens of thousands of years, language is the single most complex and powerful storehouse of human learning. But as Harrison warns us, this vast array of knowledge is quickly eroding. Harrison's book is a call to action for linguistics and anthropologist and at the same time a fascinating account for the lay reader on the variety and richness of the world's fast-vanishing languages.
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Blank Slate The Modern Denial of Human Nature
by
Steven Pinker
Jason Straight
, August 23, 2010
Stephen Pinker chalks up the blank slate. Drawing on a broad array of disciplines (psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy) Pinker subtly and persuasively argues that humans come prepackaged with a broad array of mental faculties and traits. This, however, is not another tired nature/nurture book, but turns the whole argument on its head by appealing constantly to the best current scientific evidence. One of the seminal books of our time.
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Modern Iran Roots & Results Of Revolutio
by
Nikki R Keddie
Jason Straight
, August 16, 2010
Understand the headlines! If you want to acquire a good grasp of Iranian history and Iran in the present this is the place to begin. Special attention is played to protest, revolutionary, workers, and student movements in Iranian as well as the interplay between Islam, modernization, and constitutionalism. An Iran is revealed that is perhaps the most important political experiment in the modern world. The only draw back is Keddie's sometimes abstruse wording and tendency to shift between past and present tense seemingly on a whim.
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Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes
by
Daniel Everett
Jason Straight
, August 23, 2009
Imagine a language with no numbers, no colors, no cardinal directions; imagine a people with no leaders, who rarely sleep, and have no gods or creation myths. You would be envisioning the Pihara and their language. In Don't Sleep, There are Snakes, Dan Everett provides a fascinating account of his life among the Piraha people and his long process to learn their language and culture. Everett provides an entertaining and enlightening account of a way of a unique way of life, in the process he takes the accepted wisdom of modern linguistics to the cleaners, chipping away at the foundation of Chomsky universal grammar. Don't Sleep also provides the personal account of a one time Christian missionary, who rethought the universe and his place in it after confronting a people whose view of the world caused him to question his own. If you are at all interested in language, traditional culture, anthropology, or merely in need of some enlightenment, read this book.
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Old English & Its Closest Relatives A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages
by
Orrin Robinson
Jason Straight
, April 06, 2009
Robinson's guide is an excellent and accessable introduction to the oldest members of the Germanic language family (including Old English, the precusor of the language used in this review) and to Germanic linguistics in general. The book will not teach you all 7 languages but will introduce you to them and their most unique features and explain the similarities of the various languages. Even the expert long in the tooth of Germanic linguistics will find Robinson's section on the relationships of the languages useful and worth refering back to.
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An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England
by
Bruce Mitchell
Jason Straight
, April 06, 2009
Old English is certainly old but at first glance it appears anything but English. In this book, Bruce Mitchell exposes the Englishness of Old English and carefully expounds easy steps to making the earliest forms of the English language comprehensible to the reader. For complete knowledge of the language it would be best to look further than merely Mitchell's introduction (perhaps to his Guide or to Campbell's grammar). But as an introduction to the casual learning or merely to satiate curiousity or to encourage the learner who feels bogged down in academic jargon with a more traditional approach, Mitchell's invitaton is very welcome indeed.
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March of Folly From Troy to Vietnam
by
Barbara W Tuchman
Jason Straight
, April 06, 2009
A monument to human foolishness. While historians often try to make sense of the patterns of history, Tuchman's classic book reminds us that history does not always make sense. Since its publication, a sequel could already be written by the failure of many to yield to the lessons of this book's view of history.
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Last Knight The Twilight of the Middle Ages & the Birth of the Modern Era
by
Norman F Cantor
Jason Straight
, April 06, 2009
Norman Cantor is certainly in his element with The Last Knight, which is a fascinating portrayal of the social, political, and cultural unrest of the 14th century through the lens of the notorious John of Gaunt. This book stands alongside classics like Barbara Tuchmann's "A Distant Mirror," in its portrayal of one of the pivotal periods of Western history.
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Wilderness So Immense The Louisiana Purchase & the Destiny of America
by
Jon Kukla
Jason Straight
, July 03, 2007
The Louisiana Purchase as a World Event: John Kukla's work on the Louisiana purchase is both fresh and innovative. Diving behind the scenes of the first major land acquisition by the young American Republic, Kukla brings up the events in France, Britain, Spain, Canada, and Haiti that created the Louisiana Sale that made the Louisiana Purchase possible. Kukla's writing is rich in depth and insight (and an intimate knowledge of the city of New Orleans) and is very scholarly and yet remains readable and accessable. Highly recommended.
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(6 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
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