Living under palm trees is not without its consequences . . . J. G. von Goethe, Jacob Gotfried Haafner (1754-1809) was a Dutch citizen who spent more than twenty years of his early life living outside of Europe, in India, Ceylon, Mauritius, Java, and South Africa. On his return to Europe he transformed himself into one of the most popular Dutch writers of the early nineteenth century, for his travel writing in the Romantic mode. Books like his popular Travels in a Palanquin were translated into the major European languages, and his essays against the work of Christian missionaries in Asia stirred up great controversy. Haafner worked to spread understanding of the cultures he'd come to know in his journeys, promoting European understanding of Indian literature, myth, and religion, translating the Ramayana into Dutch. With the help of generous excerpts from Haafner's own writings, including material newly translated into English, Paul van der Velde tells an affecting story of a young man who made a world for himself along the Coromandel Coast, in Ceylon and Calcutta, but who returned to Europe to live the last years of his life in Amsterdam, suffering an acute nostalgia for Asia. This will be compelling reading for anyone interested in European response to the cultures of Asia.

The New York Times bestselling history of the glamour and debauchery of the ultra-wealthy Palm Beach community--from The Breakers to Trump's Mar-a-Lago. For more than a hundred years, Palm Beach has been an exclusive and exotic universe of wealth and privilege in America. And until Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme devastated its eternally sunny world, the reality of this affluent enclave has rarely been exposed to outsiders. Now, in Madness Under the Royal Palms, resident insider Laurence Leamer reveals the secrets and scandals of this South Florida island via a cast of characters that includes social climbers, trophy wives, sugar daddies, glamorous widows and their "escorts," sociopathic multimillionaires, and elegant society queens. Dive into the unbelievable true story of love, lust, money, and murder in a uniquely American paradise.

In 1956, state Senator Charley Johns was appointed the chairman of the newly formed Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, now remembered as the Johns Committee. This group was charged with the task of unearthing communist tendencies, homosexual persuasions, and anything they saw as subversive behavior in academic institutions throughout Florida. With the cooperation of law enforcement, the committee interrogated and spied on countless individuals, including civil rights activists, college students, public school teachers, and university faculty and administrators. Today, the actions of the Johns Committee are easily dismissed as homophobic and bigoted. Communists and Perverts under the Palms reveals how the creation of the committee was a logical and unsurprising result of historic societal anxieties about race, sexuality, obscenity, and liberalism. Stacy Braukman illustrates how the responses to those societal anxieties, particularly the Johns Committee, laid the foundation for the resurgence of conservatism in the 1960s. Braukman is considered and nuanced in her stance, refusing a blanket condemnation of the extremism of a committee whose influence, even decades after its dissolution, continues to be felt in the culture wars of today.

Antoinette Caulfield brings her fiance home to Hawaii to meet her grandparents--with her classmate Iris Cooper as a chaperone. Iris is shocked to see a woman in white apparently following Antoinette. Is it the ghost of Antoinette's mother who mysteriously passed away?

Floating in My Mother's Palm is the compelling and mystical story of Hanna Malter, a young girl growing up in 1950's Burgdorf, the small German town Ursula Hegi so brilliantly brought to life in her bestselling novel Stones from the River. Hanna's courageous voice evokes her unconventional mother, who swims during thunderstorms; the illegitimate son of an American GI, who learns from Hanna about his father; and the librarian, Trudi Montag, who lets Hanna see her hometown from a dwarf's extraordinary point of view. Although Ursula Hegi wrote Floating in My Mother's Palm first, it can be read as a sequel to Stones from the River.

* One of the Best Books of 2012 —Salon "Waclawiak's novel reinvents the immigration story. How to Get Into the Twin Palms movingly portrays a protagonist intent on both creating and destroying herself, on burning brightly even as she goes up in smoke." —New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice How To Get Into the Twin Palms is the story of Anya, a young woman living in a Russian neighborhood in Los Angeles, who struggles between retaining her parents' Polish culture and trying to assimilate into her adopted community. She lusts after Lev, a Russian man who frequents the Twin Palms nightclub down the block from Anya's apartment. It is Anya's wish to gain entrance to this seeminly exclusive club. How To Get Into the Twin Palms is a really funny and often moving book that provides a unique twist on the immigrant story, and provides a credible portrait of the city of Los Angeles, literally burning to the ground.

Pabongka Rinpoche was one the twentieth century's most charismatic and revered Tibetan lamas, and in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand we can see why. In this famous twenty-four-day teaching on the lamrim, or stages of the path, Pabongka Rinpoche weaves together lively stories and quotations with frank observations and practical advice to move readers step by step along the journey to buddhahood. When his student Trijang Rinpoche first edited and published these teachings in Tibetan, an instant classic was born. The flavor and immediacy of the original Tibetan are preserved in Michael Richards' fluid and lively translation, which is now substantially revised in this new edition.

Sophie Chao examines the multispecies entanglements of oil palm plantations in West Papua, Indonesia, showing how Indigenous Marind communities understand and navigate the social, political, and environmental demands of the oil palm plant.