• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

The Garamond Agency

  • Home
  • Agency
    • About
    • Lisa Adams
    • David Miller
  • Awards
  • Authors
  • Books
  • Rights

Published

Harnessing Grief

When Maria Kefalas’s daughter Calliope was diagnosed with a degenerative, uncurable genetic disease, the last thing Maria expected to discover in herself was a superpower. She and her husband, Pat, were head over heels in love with their youngest daughter, whose spirit, dancing eyes, and appetite for life captured the best of each of them.

When they learned that Cal had MLD (metachromatic leukodystrophy), their world was shattered. But as she spent time listening to and learning from Cal, Maria developed the superpower of grief. It made her a fearless warrior for her daughter. And it gave her voice a bell-like clarity—poignant and funny all at once.

This superpower of grief also revealed a miracle—not the conventional sort that fuels the prayers of friends and strangers but a realization that, in order to save themselves, Maria and Pat would need to find a way to save others. And so, with their two older children, they set out to raise money so that they, in their son PJ’s words, could “find a cure for Cal’s disease.”

They had no way of knowing that a research team in Italy was closing in on an effective gene therapy for MLD. Though the therapy came too late to help Cal, this news would be the start of an unexpected journey that would introduce Maria and her family to world-famous scientists, brilliant doctors, biotech CEOs, a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback, and a wise nun, and it would also involve selling 50 thousand cupcakes. They would travel to the FDA, the NIH, and the halls of Congress in search of a cure that would never save their child. And their lives would become inextricably intertwined with the families of 13 children whose lives would be transformed by the biggest medical breakthrough in a generation.

A memoir about heartbreak that is also about joy, Harnessing Grief is both unsparing and generous. Steeped in love, it is a story about possibility.

Written by

Unworthy Republic

If Americans know anything about the deportation of native people in the 1830s, it is usually the story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, often recounted in maudlin prose in a narrative that is heartbreaking but ultimately of little broader import. The poetic phrase “Trail of Tears” is so familiar that many people conflate Cherokee forced emigration with deportation more generally, even though Cherokees represented a fraction—about 15,000—of the 80,000 thousand children, women, and men who were shipped west by the Federal government.

In May of 1830, Congress authorized the expulsion of indigenous peoples in the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Over the next decade, Native Americans saw their homelands and possessions stolen through fraud, intimidation, and murder. Thousands lost their lives. In this powerful, gripping book, award-winning historian Claudio Saunt upends the common view that “Indian Removal” was an inevitable chapter in U.S. expansion across the continent.

Instead, Saunt argues that it was a contested political act—resisted by both indigenous peoples and U.S. citizens – that passed by a razor-thin margin in Congress. In telling the full story of this systematic, state-sponsored theft, he reveals how expulsion became national policy, abetted by Southern power brokers and slave owners and financed by northern Wall Street bankers. Moving beyond the Trail of Tears, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Country is a fast-paced, yet deeply researched, account of unbridled greed, government indifference, and administrative incompetence. The consequences of this vast transfer of land and wealth still resonate today.

Written by

Sin Boldly

Jammed with sage advice, genuine encouragement, and surprising examples of how to write and how not to write, this book gives beginning writers and confident students alike an easy-to-follow roadmap for improving one of the most important skills for success.

En route to Sin Boldly!-induced, A+ paper bliss, readers encounter such topics as: Choosing a Topic and Telling Your Story (“K.I.S.S.-Keep It Simple, Stupid”), Literary Games (featuring “Francobabble for Freshman”), Choosing a Voice (“Dissing the Prof”), Grammatical Horrors (“A does not equal they”), and Common Mistakes (“Hopefully and Other Controversies”).

Fully revised and updated with new examples, quizzes, and tips, Sin Boldly! is not only a comprehensive guide, but also a fantastic, fun read for anyone who wants to write clearly and effectively.

Written by

The Newspaper Axis

In the years leading up to World War II, people purchased and read a stunning number of newspapers. And while elite journalists often overlooked the influence of America’s most popular newspapers, the newspapers that people actually read (as opposed to the ones that they said that they read) would shape the political and foreign policy debate in America in surprising ways. Most of the top-selling newspapers in the United States in the 1930s and early 1940s were anti-Democratic, anti-New Deal, and anti-liberal. All of them were vehemently isolationist on foreign policy.

In The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler, historian Kathryn Olmsted explores the story of the American media moguls—and their British counterparts—who used their newspaper empires to champion the isolationist cause in the years leading up to the Second World War, and makes a case for its significance in the history of the Right.

The papers that were controlled by William Randolph Hearst, Robert McCormick, Joe Patterson, and Cissy Patterson in the US, and by Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook in the UK, had a vast following. In the US, the Hearst/McCormick/Patterson papers reached more than seven million readers a day—far outpassing the numbers that Fox News boasts of today. The conservative stance that they promoted would shape the political and foreign policy debates of the time, constraining the ability of western democracies to respond to the rise of fascism.

Echoes of the anti-intellectualism championed by McCormick and the other media barons of the time can be found today. And to understand the rise of the conservative right of the 21st century we need to appreciate how the press barons of the US and the UK worked together to undermine the response to Hitler in the 1930s.

Written by

Access Rules

How do we legitimize – and limit – the power of knowledge?

Control over information in a data-driven world is shifting in favor of those who generate, store and analyze information flows on their digital platforms. This isn’t a new issue – since the days of Benjamin Franklin, information power has been turned upside down. But today, data colonialists in America and Asia rule the rest of the world.

To counter the power imbalances that are increasing as a result of these power shifts, we have to prise open access to data, information and knowledge. We need much more broadly-based access to data to advance scientific, social and economic progress in the service of sustainable development. Concentration of information power is good for a few, but bad for innovation, cooperation, and for each and every one of us.

In Access Rules, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge offer a clear, concise and compelling response, arguing that if we disrupt the monopoly power of superstar companies with open access to data, and create a level playing field, digital innovations can emerge to the benefit all. When everyone has access to the informational riches of the data age, the nature of digital power machines will change. Information technology will find its way back to its original purpose: empowering all of us to use information so we can thrive as individuals and as societies.

Written by

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 40
  • Go to Next Page »

Footer

Copyright © 2022 · The Garamond Agency, Inc. Log in