"Learn how to produce beautiful studies of mammals, insects, birds and fish, with guidance on how to treat basics such as fur, claw, teeth and scales, and depict the behaviour, movement, textures and spirit that make each creature a unique subject. A gallery of work by respected wildlife artists inspires you to build your own portfolio. Expert tips and advice both guide beginners and help intermediate artists move to the next level. First the reader is taken through artistic basics in the tutorial section. The movement of animals is discussed, and how to convey their energy. The range of media employed includes pencils, charcoal, pen and ink, pastels, watercolours, acrylics, gouache and oils. Professional examples are given with expert annotation, to explain how they have achieved various effects. The inspiring range of 30 step-by-step projects include geese on a lily pond, pelicans in flight, and a buzzing bee, among many others."--

Shake up your cookie baking, with 150 foolproof bakery-quality cookie recipes that feature exciting flavors, lush textures, and irresistible comforts. It's time for cookie baking to enter a new era. The New Cookie is a must-have collection that features the flavors of today (strawberry matcha to tahini-banana) among classic indulgences (browned butter and melty chocolate). This cookie cookbook builds on ATK's bedrock baking techniques to deliver: Indulgent cookies with incredible modern flavors: Salted Malted Milk Chocolate Chunk Cookies are supercharged chocolate chippers with crispy edges, chewy centers, toasty flavor, and dramatic pools of chocolate. Chewy, Gooey Biscoff Butter Cookies are a palm-size homage to the famous biscuit with a melty molten center. Comforting favorites that inspire new inventions: Bake Chewy Sugar Cookies (buttery, nostalgic) or go beyond with Olive Oil, Anise, and Orange Sugar Cookies (fruity and fragrant). Dreamy cookies that look like they came from a bakery case: Impress with Sparkling Blueberry-Lavender Shortbread (coat in ground freeze-dried blueberries and edible glitter) or Black & Pink Cookies (a striking chocolate-raspberry twist on the New York classic). Craveable textures, from chewy & gooey to crispy & crunchy: Make peanut butter cookies with a stretchy toasted marshmallow center, use the food processor for the most tender buttery shortbread, and add black cocoa to the richest, squidgiest flourless brownies ever. These cookie recipes are contemporary, colorful, and craveable-rivaling the cookies at bakeries and on social media, while working every single time.

"Losing a child is one of the most unreconcilable griefs. In Cloud Runner, Joy Harjo reckons with the unspeakable pain of losing her daughter: "Reason has no home in this hour," she writes. Despite a devasting loss, Harjo constructs a shrine to human resilience, reminding us that the most profound revelations can appear in our darkest hours: "I now know why we construct ceremonial epics of mystery and beauty, / Of enemy and failure: it is so we can pick up our burdens / And go on."Harjo's magical poems are known for weaving myth, song, and spirit. In this searing volume, her poems become essential witnesses to history, especially in our current era of compounded loss: mass shootings, missing and murdered Native women, climate disaster, and political violence. Cloud Runner explores how all grief may be connected; it is a testament to poetry's power to speak what is unspeakable, to touch what the mind cannot carry." --

Dyslexia is more than just a way of reading - it is a distinct way of thinking, feeling, and connecting. For many, the diagnosis raises questions: Does this limit my opportunities? Is it a superpower or a setback? What does it mean for my daily life? Dr Jacob Santhouse, Clinical Professional Counsellor, goes beyond the label to explore how dyslexia shapes the adult experience. Drawing on the latest research, clinical practice, and his own personal journey, he shares his expert insight on how dyslexia affects health and wellbeing, relationships, parenting, careers, finances, and more. Whether you've recently been diagnosed or have struggled since childhood, this empowering guide provides simple, transformative strategies to help you understand your brain, unlock your potential, and overcome life's challenges with confidence.

"Carson McCullers was a true literary phenomenon. One of the most influential and esteemed writers of the twentieth century, she penned the iconic The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter at just twenty-three and went on to have a remarkable career that inspired adaptations and tributes from writers such as Edward Albee, Charles Bukowski, Isak Dinesen, Edith Sitwell, and Tennessee Williams. Known for its melancholy tone and distinctly Southern sensibility, her work touched many, giving voice to the mistreated, the oppressed, and all those struggling to be accepted. And though her fiction explored themes of isolation and exile, McCullers herself enjoyed the support of a robust community of friends and fellow artists and experienced many passionate attachments over the course of her life. The letters collected here cover the entirety of McCullers's correspondence from 1935 until her death in 1967. They include letters to over two hundred recipients and chronicle the celebrations and tragedies of her lifetime--from her tumultuous marriage, divorce, and re-marriage with Reeves McCullers; to her all-consuming passions for women, including the Swiss artist Annemarie Schwarzenbach and the writer Marty Mann, illuminated in recently discovered correspondence; and to her complicated, decades-long relationship with the composer David Diamond, to whom the largest number of her letters were written. Also elucidated are her close collaborations with artists including Newton Arvin, Kay Boyle, Bessie Breuer, Klaus Mann, and Muriel Rukeyser; Oliver Evans, her biographer; and John Huston, the director of the film adaptation of Reflections in a Golden Eye and to whom her final known letter was sent. Intimate, earnest, and as heartbreaking as it is uplifting, this collection is a product of remarkable scholarship and dedication. The result is the most comprehensive portrait of McCullers ever published, a true window into the emotional landscape behind her work and the deeply held loves she had throughout her brief but exceptional life." -- Amazon.com

"This atlas collects everything a bird enthusiast wants to know, with maps, graphics, photographs, and illustrations"-- Provided by publisher.

"Devon Rodriguez talks to strangers: his subway sketches and person-on-the-street interviews have earned him millions of followers. His hyperrealistic work demonstrates the power of portraiture to help us see ourselves and each other. He's a new-school influencer with old-school talent. Now, the celebrated Bronx-born artist turns his perspective inward. As a child, Rodriguez escaped into art to cope with devastating abuse. It sustained him, energized him and helped him stay out of trouble. This fascinating memoir is a twenty-first-century fable about a young man with a pencil, a phone, and a relentless drive to succeed. Instead of following the conventional route to art world prestige, he saw opportunity online, experimenting with sharing his work in bite-sized TikTok videos that went viral, making him one of the top influencers of his generation. An entrepreneur who makes art accessible to everyday people, he's succeeded without gallery representation or an MFA. Devon has now sketched over a thousand people. With this book, he delivers his most precise and moving portrait yet: of himself. Frank, profound, and occasionally hilarious, Work in Progress is motivational magic for the digital age"-- Provided by publisher.

INSIDE JOKES is a masterclass in a book on how to write anything funnier, from short humor to essays to psychiatric intake forms. Each chapter has technical and practical instruction to turn comedy outsiders into insiders and non-funny readers into funny writers. Included at no extra cost: interviews with professional comedy writers, brainstorming and writing exercises, prompts, and pep talks that will take your writing from nonexistent to shitty first draft to award-deserving.

"With a deep appreciation for Beyoncé's oeuvre and a commitment to highlighting the power of Black, Brown, and queer voices, King brings a unique perspective to this examination of Beyoncé's impact and growing legacy"-- Provided by publisher.

"A grassroots history of American medicine that shows how regular people were architects of medical knowledge and care. Most histories of medicine center doctors : the standard-bearers of expertise and innovation. Yet these narratives underplay the role that ordinary people have, and always have had, on medicine and public health. Throughout early American history, everyday people - from enslaved individuals to village midwives to cowboys - have been caring for their communities. In colonial Boston, Black people’s knowledge led to smallpox inoculations, stymieing that epidemic. Midwives, more plentiful than doctors, also delivered babies more successfully. During the Civil War, women served, taking care of the wounded, making nutritious food, and keeping hospitals clean. Once doctors professionalized in the later 1800s, they protected their domain. Still, the Black community of the early 1900s created a public campaign to prevent tuberculosis. In the last half of the twentieth century, the Young Lords fought for better sanitation and increased medical infrastructure in their East Harlem neighborhood. In the face of HIV/AIDS, queer people pushed the federal government for research with their activism. Grassroots community care has always been at the cutting edge of medicine, a hidden tradition of meeting need with dignity. Medicine by the People reveals that the history of American healthcare is, at its heart, a struggle over who gets to tell the story of illness." -- publisher's website

A collection of twenty pieces that represent the best science and nature writing published the previous year and explores our ever-changing world.On his selections for this year's The Best American Science and Nature Writing, Randall Munroe writes, "Rather than simply telling people facts, I leaned toward articles that explained why we knew those facts, and why we cared, sharing portraits of people trying earnestly to understand the world around them." The essays in this collection are deeply informative and ultimately uplifting explorations into our ever-changing world--and our ever-changing place in it. From water shortages in Pakistan, to a medical device reversing the effects of vertigo, to the politics of the 2025 Los Angeles fires clean-ups, these stories span mental health, conservation, politics, climate, and more, celebrating our unending quest to better understand the world around us.THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE AND NATURE WRITING 2026 INCLUDES: Sabrina Imbler - Rivka Galchen - Rachel Aviv - Nathaniel Rich - Tatiana Schlossberg - Trevor Quirk - Roy Richard Grinker.

"One dog's love. One man's journey. When Matthew Sigman's beloved dog, Augie, died, his world fell apart. His boyfriend broke up with him. His work dried up. Even the ceiling of his West Village apartment collapsed. Heartbroken and adrift, Matthew did the only thing he could-he ran. An impulsive escape to Europe didn't lead to the cafés of Paris or the islands of Greece. Instead, thanks to a fluke in an Airbnb map, he landed in Quarna, a remote Italian mountain village seemingly hidden from tourists-and from time itself. There, amid winding cobblestone streets and alpine silence, Matthew stumbled into an unlikely friendship and madcap adventures with an exuberant innkeeper, Valerio, and discovered the warmth of a community that welcomed him as one of their own. In Because of a Dog, Matthew traces a journey from profound grief to unexpected renewal, from isolation to connection. With wit, poignancy, and hard-won insight, this memoir is a reminder that sometimes, when all seems lost, it takes a village to mend a broken heart"-- Provided by publisher.

"You know the lively exclamation mark, the controversial semicolon, and the often-omitted apostrophe, but would you recognize a percontation point? How about an obelus? Florence Hazrat argues that all punctuation marks, from the most forgotten to the most ubiquitous, are worthy of our attention. After all, the history of punctuation is the history of humankind. The first punctuation mark was a triangular symbol pressed into clay somewhere in Mesopotamia. Spaces between words were unknown for millennia, until a group of Irish monks pioneered them in the eighth century. Across ages and cultures, amid technological revolutions and radical changes in communication, these dots and dashes have reshaped the societies that created them. From the papyruses of the ancient world to our sprawling internet ecosystem, one thing has remained constant: Punctuation is powerful. These tiny marks can move markets, shift elections, topple political systems, and decide the fate of a precious human life on death row. Weaving together anthropology, the history of writing, the philosophy of language, psychology, literature, and more, On the Mark proves that punctuation is at the heart of human communication"--Book jacket flap.

"Raising Conscious Sons by bestselling author Dr. Shefali is a clarion call, a practical resource, and a hopeful invitation to radically reimagine how boys are understood, nurtured, and raised in the 21st century. Boys today are standing at a critical crossroads unlike any generation before. They are bombarded with impossible and contradictory mandates: Be tough but never vulnerable; be sensitive but never weak; be strong but never domineering. Caught between these warring expectations-and shaped by a digital world that amplifies comparison, disconnection, and performative identity-boys are now experiencing an unprecedented crisis of masculinity, marked by alarming rates of suicide, aggression, isolation, and apathy. In Raising Conscious Sons, clinical psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Shefali-founder of the revolutionary Conscious Parenting movement-offers a bold and urgently needed map for helping boys reclaim their sense of purpose and their capacity to engage meaningfully with life. Drawing on real-life clinical cases, interviews with children and parents, and practical, prescriptive guidance, she shows parents how to raise sons who: Feel emotionally secure and connected to their inner world Develop confidence grounded in integrity rather than dominance Step into purpose with clarity, empathy, and self-discipline At a time when boys are flooded with messages about masculinity yet lack guidance on how to embody it, Raising Conscious Sons stands as a one-of-a-kind guide for helping them stay emotionally connected, authentic and grounded in who they are"-- Provided by publisher.

"This volume evokes the early history of the US postal system with images of artifacts and historical documents from the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum"-- Provided by publisher.

"A biography of the city that uses the approximately 100-year period of 1929-2029 to frame and examine Berlin's history as well as its great reckoning with its own horrific heritage"-- Provided by publisher.

"With her signature whimsical style, illustrator Julia Rothman delves into the incredible world of birds, exploring everything from feathers to feeding, mating rituals to molting, and introducing readers to birds across the globe. This irresistible illustrated guide will take you around the world to meet the fascinating feathered creatures that populate our planet"-- Provided by publisher.

"A deeply reported and personal exploration of identity, resilience, and belonging from one of the most influential Spanish-language journalists in the world, Essential offers a nuanced, urgent portrait of what it means to be Latino in today's America and the contradictions of being vital to a country that still struggles to recognize you fully"-- Provided by publisher.

"Are you ready to finally make a crochet sweater you love to wear? This book will show you how. With simple steps, clear instructions, and tons of encouragement, you'll learn how to crochet sweaters that will fit, flatter, and feel amazing. You'll learn how to measure for the best fit, choose yarns and colors that make your projects shine, and practice gauge so your sweaters turn out just right"-- Provided by publisher.

"100 unfussy, comfort food recipes from the creator of Moribyan, including easy weeknight dinners, popular restaurant remakes, irresistible baked goods, and the flavorful Moroccan and Libyan dishes she grew up on. On her wildly popular platform, Moribyan, Hajar Larbah is known for sharing crave-worthy dishes that always deliver on flavor and quality without being overly complicated. With her carefully crafted recipes perfected for home cooks, from internet-famous comfort foods like Lasagna Soup to globally inspired dishes like Creamy Butter Chicken, Hajar's cooking brings big flavor without the fuss. In Moribyan's Kitchen, Hajar presents 100 recipes for every meal that are bold, cozy, and super easy. You'll find cherished family recipes for the Moroccan and Libyan meals she grew up on in addition to inventive restaurant remakes that bring the excitement of viral dishes right into your kitchen. There's even a whole chapter devoted to quick and easy, weeknight-friendly options. The diverse range of recipes are sure to satisfy any craving, with chapters including: Breakfast and Brunch: Cinnamon Roll Pancakes; Fried Chicken, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit Sandwiches; Strawberries and Cream Croissant French Toast Bake Weeknight Wins: Honey Harissa Glazed Lamb Chops; French Onion Pasta; Chicken Shawarma Sheet Pan Bake Restaurant Remakes: Din Tai Fung Cucumber Salad; Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch; Cava Braised Lamb Sweet Treats: Tiramisu Brownie Bars; Blueberry Cinnamon Crunch Coffee Cake; White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake Middle Eastern: Zaalouk (Moroccan Roasted Eggplant Dip); Embatna (Libyan Fried Potatoes Stuffed with Beef); Djaj Mhammar (Moroccan Roasted Chicken Oven Bake) For Hajar, cooking is the ultimate expression of love, and Moribyan's Kitchen is designed to make the comfort of a home cooked meal accessible to everyone"-- Provided by publisher.

"In Racist by Design, historian Kelly Lytle Hernández reveals how generations of lawmakers and law enforcers built the American immigration system to encourage white immigrants while targeting nonwhite migrants for exclusion, punishment, and removal. The goal, often explicitly stated by the system's architects, was to create a permanent caste of undocumented and criminalized workers to provide cheap labor for the American economy. Many Americans' understanding of the immigration system begins with the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late nineteenth century. Lytle Hernández expands that history by a full century, showing how the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s inspired not only America's first immigration bans (to prevent news of a free Black republic from reaching our shores) but also its first refugee resettlement program (to welcome and support Haiti's evicted enslavers.) She explains how Chinese Exclusion led the Supreme Court to disconnect immigration laws from the constitution. She reveals how eugenicists and Jim Crow segregationists built much of our current immigration regime as expressly "whites-only," and shows how during the Civil Rights Movement, Congress amended this system but never abolished it, leaving many of the regime's racist rules and rituals intact today"--

A playful and provocative exploration of mighty Wikipedia: how it was built, why it thrived, and what we lose as its ideals disintegrate. One of the keystone inventions of the twenty-first century, Wikipedia is the largest repository of human knowledge ever made, with editions in 343 languages, read by millions of people every day. Yet, its rightful status as a "digital wonder of the world" is coupled with an odd complacency. We all use Wikipedia (often without realizing it) but seldom think about what it is and where it came from. In this entertaining book, Richard Cooke offers a fresh and definitive account of this era-defining phenomenon. The Last Best Place on the Internet reveals the personality clashes, philosophical disputes, private obsessions, pioneering innovations, and unexpected ideas behind Wikipedia's fabled creation, extraordinary growth, and unparalleled success. Cooke examines the profound effect of an "encyclopedia anyone can edit" on politics, business, literature, and society at large. He explores the site's shifting role in establishing fact amid deep uncertainty about truth and authority, the often hilariously fierce debates between "Inclusionists" and "Deletionists" about what matters, and the great perils Wikipedia faces today from bots, political division, and artificial intelligence. Meticulously researched and eye-opening, The Last Best Place on the Internet is a fascinating journey into the hidden world of one of the most vital--and most endangered--cultural achievements of our time.

"From the author of A Renegade History of the United States-which Alan Brinkley called "a work of history like no other"-a provocative and fascinating alternative history of America's 250-year role in the world. Over the past 250 years, historian Thaddeus Russell argues in his bold and eye-opening new book, America has projected two opposing forces abroad: one imperial and the other liberating. Contrary to the common view that the Founders were isolationists, he contends that they envisioned a global empire-and that, ever since, the nation has cast itself as a savior, claiming a mission to uplift the world and impose the American way of life through armed force. Simultaneously, Russell shows, the global spread of American popular culture emerged as one of modern history's most subversive forces-an existential threat to authoritarian regimes that was frequently more destabilizing than military intervention, yet free of the violent blowback that typically accompanies foreign intrusion. Russell's striking narrative extends earlier portrayals of America's imperial ambition. He argues that the Civil War and Reconstruction were a colonial project by the North to conquer a seceded sovereign territory and remake it in the North's image. He shows that while progressive ideals helped justify US military rule in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War, the jazz introduced by American soldiers in Manila nightclubs had a deeper and more enduring global impact. He contends that US entry into World War II was driven less by defensive or humanitarian imperatives than by imperial calculation-making two regional conflicts into a global war-and that it ensured the culmination of the Holocaust. He also documents how authoritarian regimes, from the Soviet Union to contemporary Iran, have been eroded from within by the "American way of life." Finally, he argues that Donald Trump has not withdrawn the United States from the world so much as reframed its imperial mission: from the progressive export of ideals to a more openly territorial and transactional assertion of power. As elegantly written and impeccably documented as it is provocative, chronicling familiar characters as well as those lost to history, Savior and Seducer is a vitally important addition to our national narrative, shining an electric new light on our nation's relationship to the wider world"-- Provided by publisher.

Exploration. Science. Discovery. The National Geographic Society has shared all of this and more for the last century and a half--and yet the celebrated yellow border of its magazines, television channel, books and social media still means what it did in 1888: a celebration of the "world and all that is in it." The National Geographic Story is the epic tale of a fledgling academic club that became the world's preeminent scientific and educational institution. In these pages, more than 500 vivid photographs portray the people who pushed the frontiers of adventure to create the organization of today.