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The limits / by Freudenberger, Nell,author.;
From Mo'orea, a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tahiti, a French biologist obsessed with saving Polynesia's imperiled coral reefs sends her teenage daughter to live with her ex-husband in New York. By the time fifteen-year-old Pia arrives at her father Stephen's luxury apartment in Manhattan and meets his new, younger wife, Kate, she has been shuttled between her parents' disparate lives -- her father's consuming work as a surgeon at an overwhelmed New York hospital, her mother's relentless drive against a ticking ecological clock -- for most of her life. Fluent in French, intellectually precocious, moving between cultures with seeming ease, Pia arrives in New York poised for a rebellion, just as COVID sends her and her stepmother together into near total isolation. A New York City schoolteacher, Kate struggles to connect with a teenager whose capacity for destruction seems exceeded only by her privilege. Even as Kate fails to parent Pia -- and questions her own ability to become a mother -- one of her sixteen-year-old students is already caring for a toddler full time. Athyna's love for her nephew, Marcus, is a burden that becomes heavier as she struggles to finish her senior year online. Juggling her manifold responsibilities, Athyna finds herself more and more anxious every time she leaves the house. Just as her fear of what is waiting for her outside her Staten Island community feels insupportable, an incident at home makes her desperate to leave. When their lives collide, Pia and Athyna spiral toward parallel but inescapably different tragedies. Moving from a South Pacific "paradise," where rage still simmers against the colonial government and its devastating nuclear tests, to the extreme inequalities of twenty-first century New York City, The Limits is an unforgettably moving novel about nation, race, class, and family. Heart-wrenching and humane, a profound work from one of America's most prodigiously gifted novelists.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Dysfunctional families; Motherhood; Teenagers; COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Big Lonely Doug : the story of one of Canada's last great trees / by Rustad, Harley,author.;
"On a cool morning in the winter of 2011, a logger named Dennis Cronin was walking through a stand of old-growth forest near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. His job was to survey the land and flag the boundaries for clear-cutting. As he made his way through the forest, Cronin came across a massive Douglas-fir the height of a twenty-storey building. It was one of the largest trees in Canada that if felled and milled could easily fetch more than fifty thousand dollars. Instead of moving on, he reached into his vest pocket for a flagging he rarely used, tore off a strip, and wrapped it around the base of the trunk. Along the length of the ribbon were the words "Leave Tree." When the fallers arrived, every wiry cedar, every droopy-topped hemlock, every great fir was cut down and hauled away--all except one. The solitary tree stood quietly in the clear cut until activist and photographer T.J. Watt stumbled upon the Douglas-fir while searching for big trees for the Ancient Forest Alliance, an environmental organization fighting to protect British Columbia's dwindling old-growth forests. The single Douglas-fir exemplified their cause: the grandeur of these trees juxtaposed with their plight. They gave it a name: Big Lonely Doug. The tree would also eventually, and controversially, be turned into the poster child of the Tall Tree Capital of Canada, attracting thousands of tourists every year and garnering the attention of artists, businesses, and organizations who saw new values encased within its bark. Originally featured as a long-form article in The Walrus that garnered a National Magazine Award (Silver), Big Lonely Doug weaves the ecology of old-growth forests, the legend of the West Coast's big trees, the turbulence of the logging industry, the fight for preservation, the contention surrounding ecotourism, First Nations land and cultural rights, and the fraught future of these ancient forests around the story of a logger who saved one of Canada's last great trees."--
Subjects: Old growth forest ecology; Old growth forest conservation; Logging; Ecotourism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hope dies last : visionary people across the world, fighting to find us a future / by Weisman, Alan,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 413-482) and index."In this profoundly human and moving narrative, the bestselling author of The World Without Us returns with a book ten years in the making: a study of the precarious state of our planet and what it means to be a human on the front lines of this existential crisis. His new book, Hope Dies Last, is a literary evocation of our current predicament and the core optimism of the human species against the worst odds we have ever faced. To write this book, Weisman has travelled the globe witnessing the devastation of climate change and meeting the people striving to mitigate and undo our past transgressions. From the flooding Marshall Islands to wetlands renewal in Iraq, and from the Netherlands to the Korean DMZ to cities and coastlines in the U.S. and around the world, he has witnessed personally the best of humanity battling the heat, the hunger, and the rising tides. He profiles the work of big thinkers -- engineers, scientists, economists, and psychiatrists -- as they devise innovative and wildly creative responses to an uncertain and frightening future. We are at an unprecedented point in history, as our collective exploits on this planet are leading us to our own undoing, and we could be one of the species marching toward extinction. A remedy to climate anxiety by one of our most important voices on humans' relationship with the Earth, Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global conversation: Now that we have passed the point of no return in our battle against climate change, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected"--
Subjects: Human ecology.; Nature; Sustainability.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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How to be a climate optimist : blueprints for a better world / by Turner, Chris,1973-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the National Business Book Award winner and GG finalist, a very different book about facing the climate crisis, and what awaits us on the other side. Chris Turner has reported from the places where the sustainable future first emerged--from green islands in Denmark and green office parks in southern India, to solar panel factories in California and idealistic intentional communities from Scotland to New Mexico. Here, he condenses the first quarter century of the global energy transition into bite-sized chunks of optimistic reflection and reportage, telling a story of a planet in peril and a global effort already beginning to save it. This is a book that moves past the despair and futile anger over ecological collapse and harnesses that passion toward the project of building a twenty-first century quality of life that surpasses the twentieth-century version in every way. How to Be a Climate Optimist overflows with optimism in a moment of great panic, upheaval and uncertainty over a world on fire."--
Subjects: Climate change mitigation.; Sustainability.; Sustainable living.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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