As a member of a prominent Salt Lake City family and a direct descendant of Mormon pioneer Brigham Young, Brooke Williams was born into a carefully scripted life. He would study hard, be involved with his church and community, and follow in the footsteps of three previous generations to work in the family business. And that is what he did -- at least at first. Yet despite his outward signs of success, Williams was not satisfied. His deep love of the outdoors and insatiable desire to experience wild nature made living the life expected of him an ongoing struggle. He escaped at every opportunity into wildness, deliberately seeking risky ski routes, long, lonely runs, and other outdoor adventures, from the deserts of Mexico to the waters off Alaska. Realizing he was drowning emotionally and unable to bring his "halflives" together, he grew increasingly frustrated as the gap between his two worlds expanded. Halflives is the story of Brooke Williams' personal quest to balance the expectations of family and society with the needs and desires of his heart. He identifies a balance we all must strike between our cultural obligations and the strong pull toward wildness that our evolutionary heritage exerts on the human psyche. Book jacket.

The fascinating, curious, and sometimes macabre history of radium as seen in its uses in everyday life. Of all the radioactive elements discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, it was radium that became the focus of both public fascination and entrepreneurial zeal. Half Lives tells the fascinating, curious, sometimes macabre story of the element through its ascendance as a desirable item – a present for a queen, a prize in a treasure hunt, a glow-in- the-dark dance costume – to its role as a supposed cure-all in everyday twentieth-century life, when medical practitioners and business people (reputable and otherwise) devised ingenious ways of commodifying the new wonder element, and enthusiastic customers welcomed their radioactive wares into their homes. Lucy Jane Santos—herself the proud owner of a formidable collection of radium beauty treatments—delves into the stories of these products and details the gradual downfall and discredit of the radium industry through the eyes of the people who bought, sold and eventually came to fear the once-fetishized substance. Half Lives is a new history of radium as part of a unique examination of the interplay between science and popular culture.

I've learned that surviving isn't all it's cracked up to be. NOW: Icie's parents gave her $10,000 in cash, a map of a top-secret bunker, and instructions to get there by any means necessary. They have news of an imminent viral attack and know that the bunker is Icie's only hope for survival. She and three other teens live locked away for months, not knowing what's happening in the outside world or who has survived. Then one day, Icie discovers a shocking secret deep in the bunker. Are they really safe there after all? THEN: Generations in the future, the world has changed, and a mysterious cult worships the very mountain where Icie's secret bunker was built. The people never leave the mountain, they're ruled by Beckett, a teenager...and they have surprising ties to Icie. Icie and Beckett must both fight to survive while protecting a secret that could destroy their civilizations. This high-stakes, original, and thought-provoking adventure follows two unlikely heroes, hundreds of years apart.

The Danish-American journalist Jacob Riis visited the slums of New York City to highlight the squalor in which the “other half” lived. He used flash photography (a new innovation), tables of statistics, and personal stories to vividly depict the city’s various neighborhoods and ethnic groups. But the book isn’t merely a factual documentary—it’s also a moralistic appraisal of greedy landlords, the abundance of cheap beer dives and saloons, the low character of the tenants, and the very low wages on which the poor tried to subsist. He described some reforms already implemented, as well as those still needed. How the Other Half Lives was written at a time when many people were crowding into New York City. It was first published as an article in Scribner’s Magazine in 1889, along with many illustrations that were based directly on Riis’s photography. It was expanded into a full book in the next year, with the inclusion of more illustrations and some of Riis’s original photographs. The middle and upper classes were shocked by what the book described, about which they knew very little. Christian organizations in New York and beyond had similar reactions. The book was widely praised, and led to the enactment of many reforms in the following years aimed at improving the conditions of the tenements and the working poor. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Compulsive neat freak meets chaotic slob: Can their living space survive the conflict? Martin Harrison keeps himself to himself and his Central London flat as neat as a new pin. Maybe he should loosen up and enjoy more of a social life, but in his mind, that’s tantamount to opening the floodgates to emotional chaos. He agrees, however, to join the flat-sitting scheme in his building and look after another tenant’s flat in exchange for a similar watch over his when he’s travelling for his work. A floor away in the same building, Russ McNeely is happy with his life as a freelance cook and a self-confessed domestic slob. He also joins the flat-sitting scheme, both to be neighbourly and to help keep his flat in order, as Russ also travels for his work. For a while, the very dissimilar men never meet. Martin is horrified at the mess at Russ’s flat, while Russ finds Martin’s minimalist style creepy. But in a spirit of generosity, each of them starts to help the other out by rearranging things in their own inimitable way. Until the day a hiccup in the schedule brings them face-to-face at last.

While Doris Lessing was composing The Golden Notebook , she was intimately involved with Clancy Sigal and their relationship influenced the literary methods of both writers. Focusing on literary transformations, Rubenstein offers compelling insights into the ethical implications of disguised autobiography and roman à clef .