Otto Biersma Book order (chronological)

Where does it come from? How is it produced? What are the economic, social and environmental effects? Are there animals that it is straightforwardly right to eat? Are there situations in which not eating animals is wrong? This title gives an account of where meat comes from.

When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: 'Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far.' It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California and then in New York, where he discovered a long forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, as well as with a group of patients who would define his life, it becomes clear that Sacks' earnest desire for engagement has occasioned unexpected encounters and travels - sending him through bars and alleys, over oceans, and across continents. With unbridled honesty and humour, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions - bodybuilding, weightlifting, and swimming - also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual, his guilt over leaving his family to come to America, his bond with his schizophrenic brother, and the writers and scientists - A.R. Luria, W.H. Auden, Francis Crick - who influenced him. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer - and of the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human

The inspiring story of a son and his dying mother, who form a "book club" that brings them together as her life comes to a close.

An incredible publishing story, this epic war novel was crafted over thirty years by a decorated Vietnam veteran and became a New York Times best seller for sixteen weeks, as well as a National Indie Next and USA Today best seller. Hailed as a "brilliant account of war," it tells the timeless tale of young Marine lieutenant Waino Mellas and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are thrust into the mountain jungles of Vietnam. As they transition from boys to men, they face not only the North Vietnamese but also the relentless monsoon rains, mud, leeches, tigers, disease, and malnutrition. Compounding their struggles are the racial tensions, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers within their ranks. When the company finds itself surrounded by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines confront the raw terror of combat, an experience that will change them forever. This visceral and spellbinding narrative captures the essence of youth at war, transforming the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice. It serves as a parable of war, highlighting the redemptive power of literature and the universal themes of human resilience and brotherhood.

Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his life oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. Once he started a family, the moral dimensions of food became increasingly important. Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them. Traveling to the darkest corners of our dining habits, Foer raises the unspoken question behind every fish we eat, every chicken we fry, and every burger we grill. Part memoir and part investigative report, Eating Animals is a book that, in the words of the Los Angeles Times , places Jonathan Safran Foer "at the table with our greatest philosophers."

In Calamiteitenleer voor gevorderden beschrijft ze de lotgevallen van Blue van Meer, een buitengewoon intelligent meisje dat met haar excentrieke vader, die professor is, van de ene naar de andere academische buitenpost verhuist en uiteindelijk in North-Carolina terechtkomt. Daar, in haar laatste jaar op de eliteschool St. Gallway, sluit ze zich aan bij een groep charismatische scholieren en hun al even intrigerende docente Hannah. Wanneer een van haar vrienden verdrinkt en ook Hannah op een gruwelijke manier aan haar eind komt, ontdekt Blue dat achter deze mysterieuze sterfgevallen een wereld van raadsels en geheimen schuilgaat, vol culturele symboliek. Blue zet al haar scherpzinnigheid en kennis van literatuur, filosofie en wetenschap in om het mysterie op te lossen, maar dat blijkt niet eenvoudig te zijn. Er zijn krachten aan het werk die zich niet zomaar gewonnen geven...

Winner of the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas. One of the Ten Best Books of the Year - The New York Times Book Review 'Vivid, graphic and poignant' Washington Post 'Powerful and moving . . . An impressive success' New York Times Book Review '[A] jazzy, sinewy debut . . . Thomas's urgent, quicksilver prose makes even the darkest moments of this novel shine' O' the Oprah Magazine On the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, the unnamed black narrator of Man Gone Down finds himself broke, estranged from his white wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep his kids in school and make a down payment on an apartment for them to live in. As we slip between his childhood in inner city Boston and present-day New York City, we discover a life marked by abuse, abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it's like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life and the urge to escape that sentence.

A young man is fighting for his life.Into his room walks a bewitching woman who believes she can save him.Their journey will have you believing in the impossible.The nameless and beautiful narrator of The Gargoyle is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and wakes up in a burns ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned. His life is over he is now a monster.But in fact it is only just beginning. One day, Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles, enters his life and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly burned mercenary and she was a nun and a scribe who nursed him back to health in the famed monastery of Engelthal. As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Greenland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life and, finally, to love.

She found her teacher dead - Hanging by a piece of electrical cord. The North Carolina police think it was suicide. Her former friends - the Bluebloods - blame her for being there. And her father tells her to leave it alone. But Blue van Meer is a student of books and can't let a mystery go. Because all her life puzzles both complicated and intricate have littered her path - her mother's death in a car crash; a childhood spent roaming from town to town; her dad's serial affairs. Are these the fantasies of a teenager too lonely or too clever for her own good? Or has Blue stumbled on something so dark, so devious, that her whole world is about to be flipped upside down?