Patchwork Reality

A provocative counterargument to the blue/red divide that illuminates our country's multidimensional political spectrum. In a climate of culture wars and economic uncertainty, the media have often reduced America to a simplistic schism between red and blue states. In response to that oversimplification, journalist Dante Chinni teamed up with political geographer James Gimpel, using on-the-ground reporting and statistical analysis to get past generalizations and probe American communities in depth. Looking at the data, they recognized that the country breaks into twelve distinct types of communities, whose differences and specific concerns shed light on the subtle distinctions in how Americans vote, shop, and otherwise behave. Showcasing personal interviews, combined with facts and statistics, Our Patchwork Nation offers a brilliant new way to examine the issues that matter most to our communities, and to our nation.

From concept to completion—the modern quilter's design guide Create a quilt that is uniquely yours! Award-winning quilter Heather Black demystifies the design process with easy-to-understand tips and basic quilt math for modern makers. Learn to spot and jot down ideas from everyday life, sketching your quilt inspirations on simple graph paper. Take your quilt designs from ordinary to energetic with practical advice to create movement and depth. Achieve color balance, choose the right fabrics to pull off your pattern, and add custom quilting to elevate the impact of your quilt. Whether this is your first time to strike out on your own or you've made quilts from scratch before, this book will help you identify your likes and dislikes and freshen your approach to modern quilt design. Also included are three modern quilts with full-size patterns that you can take straight to the sewing machine! Choose colors and fabrics like a pro, with solid design and finishing advice Tailor the process to your interests and skills with piecing, applique, and hand or machine sewing Sew 3 bonus full-size patterns from celebrated quiltmaker Heather Black

Winner of the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing. In this coming-of-age novel, acclaimed author Ellen Banda-Aaku offers a profound exploration into the effects of stigma, class, and family dynamics in 1970s Zambia. Pumpkin is a nine-year-old girl pulled between two vastly different worlds – that of her father, the wealthy and power-hungry Joseph Sakavungo, and her mother, his unstable mistress. As Pumpkin attempts to come to terms with her own identity, she struggles to fashion a future for herself out of the torn patchwork of her parents' lives. Beautifully constructed, Banda-Aaku has crafted a story that is in equal parts uplifting and bittersweet.

In Utility-Style Quilts for Everyday Living, renowned fabric and quilt designer Sharon Holland provides 12 well-illustrated projects for simple yet beautiful quilts, ranging from table runners to a queen-sized quilt. Each fast-pieced, stash-busting project is great for beginners, with skill-building design tips and suggestions throughout.

Reproduction of the original.

Nick loves his quilt because each patch represents a member of his family. Their love stitches them together like patchwork. My Patchwork Quilt is a beautiful story of a family sewn together through foster care and adoption.

Through a series of dreams and delusions, Curtis Hansen becomes convinced that he and his wife, Pauline, are part of an intricate game devised for the entertainment of wealthy onlookers. To win, the couple must stay together despite a series of temptations and trials designed to break up their marriage. After playing "The Game" with Curtis for nine arduous years, Pauline makes a shocking discovery. Read the riveting account of her decade in the dark and her return to reality after Curtis is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

An unprecedented look at that most commonplace act of everyday life--throwing things out--and how it has transformed American society. Susan Strasser's pathbreaking histories of housework and the rise of the mass market have become classics in the literature of consumer culture. Here she turns to an essential but neglected part of that culture--the trash it produces--and finds in it an unexpected wealth of meaning. Before the twentieth century, streets and bodies stank, but trash was nearly nonexistent. With goods and money scarce, almost everything was reused. Strasser paints a vivid picture of an America where scavenger pigs roamed the streets, swill children collected kitchen garbage, and itinerant peddlers traded manufactured goods for rags and bones. Over the last hundred years, however, Americans have become hooked on convenience, disposability, fashion, and constant technological change--the rise of mass consumption has led to waste on a previously unimaginable scale. Lively and colorful, Waste and Want recaptures a hidden part of our social history, vividly illustrating that what counts as trash depends on who's counting, and that what we throw away defines us as much as what we keep.

The author of The Basement Quilt delivers a novel of mystery, romance—and ghosts!—as flower shop owner Anne Brown searches for a place to call home. The second saga of Anne Brown and the Colebridge Community! In The Basement Quilt, the debut novel by Ann Hazelwood, you got to know the family and friends of Anne Brown, a plucky florist whose daily ups and downs are as familiar as your own. In this follow-up book, Anne and her fiancé, Sam, start house-hunting, or is that haunting? Once again, a quilt holds keys and clues to important family secrets, but whose family is it this time? And why would anyone hide a quilt in a potting shed? Life continues apace for Anne’s family and friends, too. Share in their joys and sorrows as Colebridge goes about every community’s business. The Potting Shed Quilt is not just the title of this sequel—the quilt itself is a character. You’ll want to meet other quilt “characters” throughout the series. Praise for Ann Hazelwood and the Colebridge Community Series “I found myself immersed in the tale of this extended family and this wonderful quaint town . . . You will laugh, cry and share in their hopes and dreams.” —Community News “Ann Hazelwood knows a few things about the human spirit, family and dreaming big. Add a mixture of the love of quilting and all the things Missouri historic and otherwise; you will experience the words and passion of this unique and gifted author. Enjoy the experience!” —StreetScape Magazine

A landmark book, “brilliant, thoughtful” (The Atlantic) and “raw and gorgeous” (LA Times), that fast-forwards the discussion of the central artistic issues of our time, from the bestselling author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead. Who owns ideas? How clear is the distinction between fiction and nonfiction? Has the velocity of digital culture rendered traditional modes obsolete? Exploring these and related questions, Shields orchestrates a chorus of voices, past and present, to reframe debates about the veracity of memoir and the relevance of the novel. He argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality,” precisely because we experience hardly any, and urgently calls for new forms that embody and convey the fractured nature of contemporary experience.