As a young English teacher keen to make a difference in the world, Michelle Kuo took a job at a tough school in the Mississippi Delta, sharing books and poetry with a young African-American teenager named Patrick and his classmates. For the first time, these kids began to engage with ideas and dreams beyond their small town, and to gain an insight into themselves that they had never had before. Two years later, Michelle left to go to law school; but Patrick began to lose his way, ending up jailed for murder. And that's when Michelle decided that her work was not done, and began to visit Patrick once a week, and soon every day, to read with him again. Reading with Patrick is an inspirational story of friendship, a coming-of-age story for both a young teacher and a student, an expansive, deeply resonant meditation on education, race and justice, and a love letter to literature and its power to transcend social barriers.

Paris Park Photographs features spectacular images from a dozen public parks and gardens in and near France's capital city. Exploring many of the same places that photographer Eugene Atget (1857-1927) made famous a century ago, Michael Kolster references the pleasures and pitfalls of wandering alone amongst trees and plants and sculpture, unkempt and formally designed places, tempered by the knowledge that the modern world with all its congestion is only a few short steps away. These intimate yet inherently expansive views of Paris's parks invite closer scrutiny of the encounters awaiting us at the edges of the well-worn paths defining our daily lives. Few people venture into the frame of Kolster's photographs, but the promise of a renewed sense of hope and community resides in the details of his visual encounters and the moments of his heightened attention. Each picture speaks to us as a moment in time, even as the sequence suggests a choreography of place, one that can vary daily along with the changing moods and light of each park. Paris Park Photographs is presented in a bilingual English/French edition and concludes with an afterword by Michelle Kuo. Of note is how the book's design is inspired by Walker Evans's 1938 classic work, American Photographs, making Kolster's book of immediate interest to photo and book collectors.

How Silicon Valley, the dark net, and digital culture have affected our relationship to knowledge, history, language, aesthetics, reading, and truth. In October 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Ross William Ulbricht was arrested at the Glen Park Public Branch Library in San Francisco, accused of being the "Dread Pirate Roberts" and mastermind of a dark net drug marketplace known as Silk Road. Ulbricht was an ardent libertarian who believed Silk Road-described by the New York Times as "the largest, most sophisticated criminal enterprise the internet has ever seen"-was battling the forces of big government. He was convicted two years later of money laundering, computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics and sentenced to life in prison. Art historian Pamela Lee reads this event as a fairy tale of disruption rather than an isolated episode in the history of the dark net, Silicon Valley, and the relationship between public libraries and digital culture. Lee argues that the notion of "disruptive" technology in contemporary culture has radically affected our relationship to knowledge, history, language, aesthetics, reading, and truth. Against the backdrop of her account of Ulbricht and his exploits, Lee provides original readings of five women artists-Gretchen Bender, Cecile B. Evans, Josephine Pryde, Carissa Rodriguez, and Martine Syms-who weigh in, either explicitly or inadvertently, on the nature of contemporary media and technology. Written as a work of experimental art criticism, The Glen Park Library is both a homage to the Bay Area and an excoriation of the ethos of Silicon Valley. As with all fairy tales, the book's ultimate subjects are much greater, however, and Lee casts a critical eye on collisions between privacy and publicity, knowledge and information, and the past and future that are enabled by the technocratic worldview.

This is a fully illustrated and user-friendly reference book that tells where and when to find edible mushrooms - with delicious recipes for each. With a dash of humor and a dollop of science, Michael Kuo takes the mystery out of mushroom hunting and cooking. Like his earlier and very popular book Morels, ""100 Edible Mushrooms"" is written in the author's inimitable, engaging, and appealingly humorous style, taking the reader on the hunt through forest and kitchen in search of culinary delights and mycological pleasures. Kuo describes in detail how to identify each species, where and when to find them, and how to cook them in creative and delicious recipes. The mushrooms presented in the book are the most-often eaten varieties, including a description of the button mushrooms found in the grocery store. All of the mushrooms have at least one full-color illustration and some several more to aid in identification and distinction of look-alike and nonedible species. It is an indispensable book for mushroom hunters, cooks, and naturalists.

From grassland fairy circles to alpine nano-shrooms, the Rocky Mountain region invites mushroom hunters to range though a mycological nirvana. Accessible and scientifically up-to-date, The Essential Guide to Rocky Mountain Mushrooms by Habitat is the definitive reference for uncovering post-rain rarities and kitchen favorites alike. Dazzling full-color photos highlight the beauty of hundreds of species. Easy-to-navigate entries offer essential descriptions and tips for identifying mushrooms, including each species' edibility, odor, taste, and rumored medicinal properties. The authors organize the mushrooms according to habitat zone. This ecology-centered approach places each species among surrounding flora and fauna and provides a trove of fascinating insights on how these charismatic fungi interact with the greater living world.

Experience spans Eliasson's career to date via images of his installations, sculptures, paintings, photographs, films, architectural projects, and interventions in public space - each with an extended caption to guide readers through the work

A comprehensive, accessible book for both amateur morel hunters and mushroom scientists about one of North America's most popular outdoor activities Michael Kuo brings years of morel-hunting experience to Morels, providing thorough information in an engaging, readable style to seasoned morel hunters and beginners alike. The book includes extensive information on the art of hunting morels, and on current scientific knowledge regarding these delectable delicacies. In addition, Kuo compiles easy-to-understand information on the latest scientific research into morels, from studies into how they grow to DNA-based classification of species. Morels features 200 color photographs. Chapters include, among others - What Are Morels? - Where and When to Find Morels - Hunting Morels - Eating Morels - The Science of Morels