“A story of love and courage amid brutality and terror, this is the testimony of a child who has endured the unthinkable.” —J.K. Rowling “I’m very afraid I will die tonight.” —Bana Alabed, Twitter, October 2, 2016 “Stop killing us.” —Bana Alabed, Twitter, October 6, 2016 “I just want to live without fear.” —Bana Alabed, Twitter, October 12, 2016 When seven-year-old Bana Alabed took to Twitter to describe the horrors she and her family were experiencing in war-torn Syria, her heartrending messages touched the world and gave a voice to millions of innocent children. Bana’s happy childhood was abruptly upended by civil war when she was only three years old. Over the next four years, she knew nothing but bombing, destruction, and fear. Her harrowing ordeal culminated in a brutal siege where she, her parents, and two younger brothers were trapped in Aleppo, with little access to food, water, medicine, or other necessities. Facing death as bombs relentlessly fell around them—one of which completely destroyed their home—Bana and her family embarked on a perilous escape to Turkey. In Bana’s own words, and featuring short, affecting chapters by her mother, Fatemah, Dear World is not just a gripping account of a family endangered by war; it offers a uniquely intimate, child’s perspective on one of the biggest humanitarian crises in history. Bana has lost her best friend, her school, her home, and her homeland. But she has not lost her hope—for herself and for other children around the world who are victims and refugees of war and deserve better lives. Dear World is a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit, the unconquerable courage of a child, and the abiding power of hope. It is a story that will leave you changed.

Peppermint Sticks and Banana Peels is a collection of short stories that provides a sometimes humorous, sometimes touching, and sometimes edgy look at life.

Strung out irresistibly over 14 islands, where Lake Mälaren joins the Baltic Sea, Stockholm's watery vistas make it Scandinavia's most beautiful city and second most visited city in Scandinavia. The fourth edition of Time Out Stockholm brings travelers the best of the city's natural beauty, its rich history, and its cool, cosmopolitan culture. Time Out's resident team helps travelers get the best out of Scandinavia's coolest capital, providing the inside track on local culture plus hundreds of independent venue reviews. As well as covering visitor essentials, Time Out Stockholm has every address visitors need, from design-savvy boutiques to stunning royal palaces, plus the best of the archipelago for a break from all that Nordic chic. Suggested day-trip itineraries are also included.

Swimming the Great Lakes, growing bonsai trees, hunting big game, carving the Last Supper, spinning, skating, sculling, and baking are just some of the serious hobbies of the people portrayed in this intriguing work on how Americans spend their leisure time.

About the Book A BOOK ABOUT THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF INGREDIENTS COMMONLY FOUND IN MOST INDIAN KITCHENS. Did you know that a couple of bananas a day can lower your blood pressure? That nineteenth century sailors used to eat potatoes to fight scurvy? That Ayurveda considers rice the perfect healing food? That George Bernard Shaw was a brinjal-loving vegetarian? That turmeric could be anti-carcinogenic? That urad dal is an aphrodisiac? Ratna Rajaiah takes a walk down memory lane, only to find it redolent with the aromas of her mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens, and lined with the spices and condiments of her youth. Pausing often, she meets old culinary friends – coconuts and chillies, mangoes and jackfruit, ragi and channa dal, ghee and jaggery, mustard seeds and curry leaves – and introduces us to almost-forgotten joys, like the sight of steaming kanji or the scent of freshly cut ginger. Taking detours, she shares recipes for old favourites (often with a surprising twist!) and reveals delightful slivers of trivia and fascinating nuggets of gastronomic history. Delving deep, she discovers that traditional fare is much more than comfort food (many local ingredients are health-giving and healing too!) and that much of what the West is discovering about herbs and spices has been known to our ancestors for centuries. An unabashed and wonderful ode to the blessings of simple, traditional vegetarian food.

The "Hikayat Banjar," a seventeenth-century native court chronicle from Southeast Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as "the banana tree at the gate." Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system, standing on its head the prevailing view of resource-poor and economically marginal tropical forest dwellers. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo's native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful. This success is based on the development of a "dual" household economy, with distinct subsistence- and market-oriented sectors, which has historically made these "smallholders" extremely competitive with the large-scale, heavily capitalized, state-supported plantation sector. Dove sheds new light on the nature of smallholders and in particular their relationship with the global economic system. He demonstrates that processes of globalization began millennia ago and that they have been more diverse and less teleological than often thought. His analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out. The ubiquitous but historically inaccurate emphasis on isolation and resource-poverty disguises that the overweening characteristic of these communities is their political marginality and that their greatest want is not to be uplifted economically but to be empowered politically.