NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist • “I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review “Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.”—The Washington Post In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times. When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live. How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

A dog describes being mistreated by a cruel master but then later being taken in by a kind family.

Poetry. Art. California Interest. With an essay by Norma Cole. STUDIO VISIT collects impressions about art and life from 100 in-studio conversations with Bay Area artists, writers, curators, and gallerists. Each conversation was whittled down to a list of words and a series of color swatch collages that each person chose during the visit. The result is a series of fragmentary portraits of each person. Participants include: Zarouhie Abdalian, Claudia Altman-Siegel, D-L Alvarez, Mari Andrews, Kim Anno, Chris Ashley, Stephen Beal, Dodie Bellamy, Bill Berkson, Libby Black, Rebeca Bollinger, Matt Borruso, Rena & Trish Bransten, Brad Brown, Christopher Brown, Regina Clarkinia, Ishan Clemenco, Amanda Curreri, Mel Davis, Veronica De Jesus, Apsara DiQuinzio, Nathaniel Dorsky, Chris Duncan, Sally Elesby, Amy Ellingson, Amy Evans-McClure, Liam Everett, Kota Ezawa, Josh Faught, Bruno Fazzolari, Vincent Fecteau, Aida Gamez, Rema Ghuloum, Bryson Gill, James Gobel, Matt Gordon, Leonie Guyer, Glen Helfand, Cliff Hengst, Scott Hewicker, Richard Hoblock, Jens Hoffmann, David Huffman, Colter Jacobsen, Jordan Kantor, Rachel Kaye, Kevin Killian, George Kuchar, Ruth Laskey, Neil LeDoux, Steven Leiber, Connie Lewallen, Robin McDonnell, Philip McGaughy, Mac McGinnes, Martin McMurray, Leigh Markopoulos, Pam Martin, Andrew Masullo, Cheryl Meeker, Anthony Meier, Jim Melchert, Maysha Mohamedi, Ron Nagle, Jay Nelson, Tucker Nichols, Shaun O'Dell, Sian Oblak, Francesca Pastine, Chris Perez, Joey Piziali, Josh Podoll, Maria Porges, Mel Prest, Emily Prince, Lucy Puls, Laurie Reid, Brody Reiman, Eli Ridgway, Larry Rinder, Annabeth Rosen, Jesse Schlesinger, Jovi Schnell, Allison Smith, Dean Smith, Lynn Sondag, Kathryn Spence, Jordan Stein, Suzanne Stein, Jill Storthz, Margaret Tedesco, Sarah Thibault, Dan Tierney, Kathryn Van Dyke, David Wilson, Pamela Wilson- Ryckman, Cooley Windsor, Steven Wolf, John Zurier, and Nina Zurier."

Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.

This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.