Everything Below The Waist

In the United States, more than half the women who give birth are given drugs to induce or speed up labor; for nearly a third of mothers, childbirth is major surgery - the cesarean section. For women who want an alternative, choice is often unavailable: Midwives are sometimes inaccessible; in eleven states they are illegal. In one of those states, even birthing centers are outlawed.When did birth become an emergency instead of an emergence? Since when is normal, physiological birth a crime? A groundbreaking journalistic narrative, Pushed presents the complete picture of maternity care in America. Crisscrossing the country to report what women really experience during childbirth, Jennifer Block witnessed several births - from a planned cesarean to an underground home birth. Against this backdrop, Block investigates whether routine C-sections, inductions, and epidurals equal medical progress. She examines childbirth as a reproductive rights issue: Do women have the right to an optimal birth experience? If so, is that right being upheld? Block's research and experience reveal in vivid detail that while emergency obstetric care is essential, there is compelling evidence that we are overusing medical technology at the expense of maternal and infant health: Either women's bodies are failing, or the system is failing women.

The brutal murder of a friend leaves lawyer John Coleman stunned and sends shockwaves through the city of Cleveland. The technique of the killing recalls memories of the Torso Murderer, who dismembered at least twelve people decades ago and then vanished—eluding even legendary crime fighter Eliot Ness. Jennifer, the victim’s beautiful daughter, hires John to handle her father’s estate, and romantic feelings for her soon complicate his already troubled marriage. When John finds himself entangled with a cold-blooded biker gang, an ex-cop with a fuzzy past, and the drug-addicted son of the dead man, he struggles to make sense of it all. ​But he cannot shake a growing sense of dread.

Millions of us are locked into an unwinnable weight game, as our self-worth is shredded with every diet failure. Combine the utter inefficacy of dieting with the lack of spiritual nourishment and we have generations of mad, ravenous self-loathing women. So says Geneen Roth, in her life-changing new book, Women, Food and God. Since her 1991 bestseller, When Food Is Love, was published, Roth has taken the sum total of her experience and combined it with spirituality and psychology to explain women's true hunger. Roth's approach to eating is that it is the same as any addiction - an activity to avoid feeling emotions. From the first page, readers will be struck by the author's intelligence, humour and sensitivity, as she traces the path of overeating from its subtle beginnings through to its logical end. Whether the drug is booze or brownies, the problem is the same: opting out of life. She powerfully urges readers to pay attention to what they truly need - which cannot be found in a supermarket. She provides seven basic guidelines for eating (the most important is to never diet) and shares reassuring, practical advice that has helped thousands of women who have attended her highly successful seminars. Truly a thinking woman's guide to eating - and an anti-diet book - women everywhere will find insights and revelations on every page.

Take a peek into the past for wise and witty advice from the American Girls. Over the centuries, these girls have faced everything from brothers to bullies to boiled turnips. Their experiences have taught us how to survive and thrive. They've also taught us what it means to be a girl in any era: reach high, dream big, and speak out for what you believe in. With classic illustrations and memorable story moments, this book is a treasure for every American girl.

An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller A Goop Book Club Pick "If you want your breath to catch and your heart to stop, turn to Kate Baer."--Joanna Goddard, Cup of Jo A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend. “When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands/Little by little, mountains are climbed.” So ends Kate Baer’s remarkable poem “Things My Girlfriends Teach Me.” In “Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels” she challenges her reader to consider their grandmother’s cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In her poem “Deliverance” about her son’s birth she writes “What is the word for when the light leaves the body?/What is the word for when it/at last, returns?” Through poems that are as unforgettably beautiful as they are accessible, Kate Bear proves herself to truly be an exemplary voice in modern poetry. Her words make women feel seen in their own bodies, in their own marriages, and in their own lives. Her poems are those you share with your mother, your daughter, your sister, and your friends.

Gives the nitty-gritty on injections, rejections, biting your tongue during happy parent-to-be conversations, and trying not to cry over baby shower invitations.

“There are moments when a story shakes you...Barely Missing Everything is one of those stories, and Mendez, a gifted storyteller with a distinct voice, is sure to bring a quake to the literary landscape.” —Jason Reynolds, New York Times bestselling author of Long Way Down In the tradition of Jason Reynolds and Matt de la Peña, this heartbreaking, no-holds-barred debut novel told from three points of view explores how difficult it is to make it in life when you—your life, brown lives—don’t matter. Juan has plans. He’s going to get out of El Paso, Texas, on a basketball scholarship and make something of himself—or at least find something better than his mom Fabi’s cruddy apartment, her string of loser boyfriends, and a dead dad. Basketball is going to be his ticket out, his ticket up. He just needs to make it happen. His best friend JD has plans, too. He’s going to be a filmmaker one day, like Quentin Tarantino or Guillermo del Toro (NOT Steven Spielberg). He’s got a camera and he’s got passion—what else could he need? Fabi doesn’t have a plan anymore. When you get pregnant at sixteen and have been stuck bartending to make ends meet for the past seventeen years, you realize plans don’t always pan out, and that there are some things you just can’t plan for… Like Juan’s run-in with the police, like a sprained ankle, and a tanking math grade that will likely ruin his chance at a scholarship. Like JD causing the implosion of his family. Like letters from a man named Mando on death row. Like finding out this man could be the father your mother said was dead. Soon Juan and JD are embarking on a Thelma and Louise­—like road trip to visit Mando. Juan will finally meet his dad, JD has a perfect subject for his documentary, and Fabi is desperate to stop them. But, as we already know, there are some things you just can’t plan for…

How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.

As featured on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 5 Live Selected as one of the Independent’s 10 best pregnancy books for expectant parents Birth is a feminist issue. It’s the feminist issue nobody’s talking about.

Being raised in the raw, gritty streets of Northview Heights in Pittsburgh isn’t easy. Twin brothers, Deion and Day’onne Jenkins, have grown up in the cold streets of the Pennsylvania community with their adoptive mother, Melissa, and their younger sister, Corrine. Deion, a young, aspiring writer, tries his best to stay out of trouble and keep his hands clean. But it’s a challenge with his brother’s hard, ruthless ways. Day’onne, who continuously wreaks havoc throughout the city, does whatever it takes to get on top with the help of his best friend, Menace. But after crossing the wrong person—a vet in the drug game—things turn for the worst in all of their lives. Corrine, who is on the path of destruction, also gets caught up in the fire. When push comes to shove and Deion’s family is in dying need of his help, will he swallow all of his fears for his family and put them over everything? Or will he continue onto his road to success and forget about the streets of Northview Heights that he tried his best to escape from?