Showing results by narrator "Matthew Josdal" in All Categories

"Making your love manifest, transforming your spirit, good heart, and able hands into food is a great undertaking,” writes renowned chef and Zen priest Edward Espe Brown, “one that will nourish you in the doing, in the offering, and in the eating.” With No Recipe: Cooking as Spiritual Practice, Brown beautifully blends expert cooking advice with thoughtful reflections on meaning, joy, and life itself.

Just after midnight on April 21, 1842, John McLoughlin, Jr. - the chief trader for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Stikine, in the northwest corner of the territory that would later become British Columbia - was shot to death by his own men. They claimed it was an act of self-defence, their only means of stopping the violent rampage of their drunk and abusive leader. Sir George Simpson, the HBC's Overseas Governor, took the men of Stikine at their word, and the Company closed the book on the matter.

Ziri Mokuru has lived her entire life in the rural village of Arden Hollow on the planet Tersi. While her parents are off having adventures and being Very Important People, she's struggled simply to find a place where she belongs. One night, she investigates a disturbance in her home and discovers an armor-clad man sorting through her belongings. Her first thought is for her parents' safety, not to question why this man is in her home late at night without even the courtesy of knocking.

In February 2013, Toronto's former mayor, Rob Ford, was caught on video smoking crack cocaine. Weeks later, he was accused of groping a campaign rival; had to leave a gala for being too intoxicated; and was fired as the coach of a high school football team. The events were part of a stream of Rob Ford "mishaps", which include a DUI; accusations of domestic violence; a trial where the Toronto City Council stripped him of his powers; even accusations of murder.

Do not let Etgar Keret deceive you. The Israeli writer who's worked in film, illustration, animation, and radio, is a storyteller in all senses of the word. Like a conman, he'll promise you a simple story and then the next thing you know your emotional reserves have been completely emptied. It's a literary bait and switch, and he'll get you every time.

McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco. In this piece by Ryan Boudinot, a hangdog robot searches for romance.

On a frigid February evening in 1805, Amos Babcock brutally murdered Mercy Hall. Believing that he was being instructed by God, Babcock stabbed and disemboweled his own sister before dumping her lifeless body in a rural New Brunswick snowbank. This is the tragic and fascinating story of how isolation, duplicity, and religious mania turned impoverished, hardworking people violent, leading to a murder and an execution.

It's Christmas Eve in Manhattan. An eminent plastic surgeon slips on the ice, lands on his butt, and sprains his ankle. So far, so good. A woman such as he's never known yanks him to his feet and conjures the miracle of a taxi. Harrison recuperates with Franz Schubert, Bette Davis, and a foundling cat. Then it's back to rhinoplasties, liposuction, and the peccadilloes of his obnoxious colleagues. It is only when he collides again with that strangely helpful woman that things take a wild and revolutionary turn.

 Based on three case studies from the Middle East, The Land beyond the Border advances an innovative theoretical framework for the study of state expansions and state contractions. 

Dickens and Hardy knew it, and Chaucer knew it before them: the face can be a powerful expression of personality. So why, in the last hundred years, has literature increasingly put its characters behind masks?

The American dream of equal opportunity is in peril. America's economic inequality is shocking, poverty threatens to become a heritable condition, and our healthcare system is crumbling despite ever increasing costs. In this thought-provoking book, Edward D. Kleinbard demonstrates how the failure to acknowledge the force of brute luck in our material lives exacerbates these crises leading to warped policy choices that impede genuine equality of opportunity for many Americans.

Our health care system is crippled by desperate efforts to prevent the inevitable. A third of the national Medicare budget - nearly $175 billion - is spent on the final year of life, and a third of that amount on the final month, often on expensive (and futile) treatments. Such efforts betray a fundamental flaw in how we think about healthcare: we squander resources on hopeless situations, instead of using them to actually improve health.

The Cottage on the Hill is a horror story, but it’s a J. Robert Lennon horror story, in which the characters’ loneliness - their disconnectedness, their inability, at times, even to speak or listen to one another - is more chilling than any of the supernatural elements.

This piece, set in the year 2024, follows the lovelorn travails of a hapless member of the Hungarian surveillance apparatus.

It takes a starship to raise a child. Or a time machine. Or a tribe of elves. Fortunately, Geek Parenting offers all that and more, with thoughtful mini essays that reveal profound child-rearing advice (and mistakes) from the most beloved tales of geek culture. Nerds and norms alike can take counsel from some of the most iconic parent-child pairings found in pop culture: Aunt May and Peter Parker, Benjamin and Jake Sisko, Elrond and Arwen, even Cersei and Joffrey.

Internationally-acclaimed speaker and founder of the cutting-edge venture capital Amyx Ventures, Scott Amyx, reveals how you can attain real success in your life, your way. His theory of Strive is a challenge to the conventional wisdom that has held so many people back from achieving their goals and enjoying lasting happiness. Scott helps you take stock of your own habits and practices to identify how your routine and misconceptions are holding you back. Insights from throughout history up through today's cutting-edge research show how embracing discomfort fuels lasting success.

On his 13th birthday, Buddy gets shipped up north by his religious mother, who can't cope with his sister's teenage pregnancy. Just as he resigns himself to spending the entire summer at Gram's farm caring for kittens and cows, his bitter sister Brinda arrives, ending his peace and solitude. When her boyfriend Jackie shows up and turns his attentions to Buddy from his bride-to-be, Buddy must do what Mama said - or take matters into his own hands.

A family takes in a tarantula as one of their own suffers from cancer. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

A mother and son attempt to make their way across a desert. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.