Catalog Search Results
1) Arrival
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When mysterious spacecraft touch down around the world, a team, including linguist Louise Banks, is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers, and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity
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Selig, who loves words and copies them on pieces of paper that he carries with him, goes on a trip to discover his purpose. Words. Selig collects them, ones that stir his heart (Mama!) and ones that make him laugh (giggle). But what to do with so many luscious words? After helping a poet find the perfect words for his poem (lozenge, lemon, and licorice), he figures it out: His purpose is to spread the word to others. And so he begins to sprinkle,...
3) Fly by Night
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Mosca Mye and her homicidal goose, Saracen, travel to the city of Mandelion on the heels of smooth-talking con-man, Eponymous Clent.
Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad. Mosca Mye's father insisted on teaching her to read - even in a world where books are dangerous, regulated things. Eight years later, Quillam Mye has died,...
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New discoveries in biology and the neurosciences are revealing how the structure of language-the words we think and speak-can actually change the way the neurons in our brains and hearts connect. But our ancestors understood this connection intuitively, thousands of years ago. They created specific word-patterns to provide comfort, healing, strength, and inner power in difficult times, and they encoded these powerful words in prayers, chants, mantras,...
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The maestro storyteller and reporter provocatively argues that what we think we know about speech and human evolution is wrong.
Tom Wolfe, whose legend began in journalism, takes us on an eye-opening journey that is sure to arouse widespread debate. THE KINGDOM OF SPEECH is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech--not evolution--is responsible for humanity's complex societies and achievements.
From Alfred Russel Wallace, the Englishman...
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"'Free speech' always has been limited by obstacles: national, state, or local laws, organizational rules, social restrictions, incomplete transmission via technology, and the limits of language itself. Now, with the advent of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and YouTube, a new era has emerged, and free speech has exploded. Never before have we enjoyed such free and diverse access to information, or more freedom to...
7) Gib-ber-ish
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When Dat starts school in a country where he does not speak the language, everything around him sound like gibberish until a new friend helps him make sense of his new world.
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"One of the World's most prominent public intellectuals, Noam Chomsky has, in more than fifty years of writing on politics, philosophy, and language, revolutionized modern linguistics and established himself as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. The Essential Chomsky brings together selections from his most important writings since 1959 - from his groundbreaking critique of B.F. Skinner to his bestselling,...
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"Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of 'great works of literature,' but mostly spends her days subtitling Bollywood movies and living off her parents' generous allowance. Adding to her growing sense of inadequacy, her mediocre white boyfriend, Adam, has successfully leveraged his savant-level aptitude for languages into an enviable career. But when Adam learns to speak Urdu practically overnight, Anisa forces him to reveal his secret. Adam...
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Mimi is a writer and when she finds that some of her favorite words for natural things, such as wren, violet, and dandelion, are disappearing she appoints her granddaughter, Brooke, as the keeper of wild words, and shows her how to bring them to life by knowing, appreciating, and using the things they stand for.
15) Fox 8: a story
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Idealistic Fox 8's ability to communicate in "Yuman" cannot save his pack when their den and food supply are destroyed to build a mall, so he writes a letter asking for an explanation of human's cruelty.
16) Pie in the Sky
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"Sometimes life isn't a piece of cake... When Jingwen moves to a new country, he feels like he's landed on Mars. School is torture, making friends is impossible since he doesn't speak English, and he's often stuck looking after his (extremely irritating) little brother, Yanghao. To distract himself from the loneliness, Jingwen daydreams about making all the cakes on the menu of Pie in the Sky, the bakery his father had planned to open before he unexpectedly...
18) Max's words
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When Max cuts out words from magazines and newspapers, collecting them the way his brothers collect stamps and coins, they all learn about words, sentences, and storytelling.