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And Then Life Happens: A Memoir
By Auma Obama. 2012
A moving account by Auma Obama about her life in Africa and Europe, and her relationship with her brother, Barack…
Obama.While her younger brother Barack grew up in the U.S. and Indonesia, Auma Obama's childhood played out at the other end of the world in a remote village in Kenya, the birthplace of the siblings' shared father. Barack and Auma met for the first time in the 1980s, and they built a lasting relationship which lead to travels together in Kenya, research into their family history and finally Auma's support for her brother's political career and eventual bid for the U.S. presidency.Auma spent sixteen years studying and living in Germany, moved to England for love, and gave birth to a daughter there. The tension between her original and chosen worlds and cultures was a constant challenge, and eventually Auma returned to Africa and worked to support young men and women in shaping their futures. In And Then Life Happens, her candid and emotional memoir, Auma shares her own story as well as recollections of and experiences with her famous brother, who says about their first encounter: "I hugged her, we looked at each other, and laughed. I knew right then that I loved her."Both a history of fine jewelry coming out of Paris in the Golden Age and a tour through the secretive…
world of high-end, privately-sold jewelry, Diving for Starfish is a stylish detective story with a glittering piece of jewelry at its heart. In the mid 1930s, in the workroom of the famous Parisian jeweler Boivin, a young jewelry designer named Juliette Moutard created one of the most coveted pieces of jewelry in the world—the famous starfish pin—still sought after today by aficionados of fine jewelry. The starfish, created out of gold and encrusted with 71 cabochon rubies and 241 small amethysts, was distinctive because its five rays were articulated, meaning that they could curl and conform to the bustline or shoulder of the women who wore it. The House of Boivin made three of them. Two of the women who bought and wore the starfish were Claudette Colbert and Millicent Rogers. Obsessed with the pin after she saw it in the private showroom of a Manhattan jewelry merchant, Cherie Burns set off on a journey to find out all she could about the elusive pins and the women who owned them. Her search took her around the world to Paris, London, New York, and Hollywood. Diving for Starfish is the story of these marvelous pieces of jewelry and the equally dazzling women who loved them.The Intelligent Conversationalist: 31 Cheat Sheets That Will Show You How to Talk to Anyone About Anything, Anytime
By Imogen Lloyd Webber. 2016
Have you ever been at a cocktail party when all of a sudden you feel like an outsider in the…
conversation because you have absolutely no idea what the person is talking about? You're standing around with a glass of wine and someone starts talking about how the stock market did that day leading to the career highs of Ben Bernanke and the best way to short a stock. You stand there completely silent because you know nothing about the stock market, let alone the history of economics. You're being pushed to the outside edge of the pack and there's no way to reach gracefully for your iPhone and Google. Fear not: Imogen Lloyd Webber is on a mission to make everyone as conversationally nimble as she has learned to be as a cable news pundit. Her solution: get a few cheat sheets and study up. Remember cheat sheets, those slips of paper filled with facts? As Imogen might say "Google is good, but a cheat sheet is forever..." In eight cheat sheets, Imogen takes you through the facts that come up in most conversations: the English language, math/economics, religion, history, politics, geography, biology and culture. From the history of money to who signed The Magna Carta, Imogen shows you how to get back in a conversation, win any argument and most importantly, how to pivot out of a tough conversational bind. Imogen Lloyd Webber's The Intelligent Conversationalist will help you talk with anyone about anything anytime.The Thin You Within You: Winning the Weight Game with Self-Esteem
By Abraham J. Twerski. 1985
Diets don't work. The pounds may slide off, but for too many dieters, once the food scales and calorie counters…
have been put away, the weight returns. Dr. Abraham Twerski, a specialist in addictive behavior, shows that it is not lack of willpower that leads to overeating but an absence of self-esteem. To develop healthy eating habits, a person must first develop a strong sense of self.With his characteristic upbeat style, Dr. Twerski explains: -The seemingly illogical compulsion of overeating and its connection to low self-esteem-The origins and evolutions of low self-esteem and how to identify common problems of a negative self-image-How to rely on yourself, instead of food, in times of stress, anger, and fear-How to deal with friends and family members who may contribute to and unhealthy self-image and eating habits -How to find the courage to change the life-long habits and where to get outside help in the form of therapy and support groupsWith Dr. Twerski's straightforward and honest approach, losing weight is redefined as gaining a sense of self and banishing diets forever.Images of Desire: A Return To Natural Sensuality (Images Ser. #1)
By Jaqueline Lapa Sussman. 2001
We all have secret images within us--as unique as our fingertips--which can transform us into the carefree sexual beings we…
were born to be. We can uncover those primary images in our own minds because natural sensuality can be self-taught. Images of Desire can unlock what you need to know to find the natural, primal, sensual you . . . and elicit the same sensuality from the person you love.Today, many people's images of sexuality have been shaped by television, magazines, fashion, and advertising, and so no longer arise naturally from their core selves. Eidetic images--the natural images encoded in the brain--have been buried under those imposed layers of false imagery.When used correctly, eidetic images can heal and enhance one's natural sensual abilities, allowing the true sensual self to flourish free of the images imposed on us by society. Images of Desire can reveal the sexual potential we have buried and free us to experience our most genuine emotions--joy, sensual pleasure, love, and passion.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.Have you ever wondered...Why am I so eaily discouraged?Why do I procrasinate?Why do I stare at myself in the mirror?Why…
do I keep people waiting?Why do I eat when I am not hungry?Why do I secretly hope other people will fail?Why do I feel alone even when I'm around other people?Why am I constantly misplacing my keys and other things?Why do I enjoy hearing the secrets and confessions of others?Why will I do a favor for someone I don't even like?Why am I so superstitious?Why do I have trouble asking for help?If any of these behavior, habit, and thoughts are keeping you from having the life you want, then you need to know that help has finally arrived in David J. Lieberman's Instant Analysis.Staying Strong: 365 Days a Year
By Demi Lovato. 2013
Demi Lovato wakes up each morning and affirms her commitment to herself—to her health, her happiness, her being. Those commitments…
are the bedrock of her recovery and her work helping other young people dealing with the issues she lives with every single day. Demi is a platinum-selling recording artist whose latest album—DEMI—is already a smash hit. She's about to embark on her second season as a judge on X-Factor, and just launched The Lovato Treatment Scholarship Program. And she is an outspoken advocate for young people everywhere. Demi is also a young woman finding her way in the world. She has dealt deftly with her struggles in the face of public scrutiny, and she has always relied, not just on friends and family, but daily affirmations of her self-worth and value. Affirmations that steady her days and strengthen her resolve. Those affirmations have grown into STAYING STRONG, a powerful 365-day collection of Demi's most powerful, honest, and hopeful insights. Each day will provide the readers with a quote, a personal reflection and a goal. These are Demi's words. Words she lives by and shares with the people she loves and total strangers alike. They are a powerful testament to a young woman standing up and fighting back.Spirit of Adventure: Eagle Scouts and the Making of America's Future
By Alvin Townley. 2009
An extraordinary journey alongside America's new generation of Eagle Scouts, who are discovering their purpose and bringing the values of…
Scouting to the world.Over the past century, Scouts have helped to guide the course of American history. But what does Scouting and the Eagle badge mean to the Scouts of today? How will they shape the future of Scouting and America itself? In Spirit of Adventure, Scouting expert and Eagle Scout Alvin Townley finds the answer.Townley traveled across the country and to the far corners of the globe to meet these young Eagle Scouts. He found them everywhere, continuing the life of adventure and service that they had begun in Scouting. He discovered them in Afghanistan providing medical care to villagers, in Australia saving coral reefs, at the Super Bowl and Olympic venues striving for victory, on desert cliffs and at inner-city schools teaching new lessons, in Africa bringing hope to children, and on the windswept deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz preparing for takeoff.Whether doctors, activists, servicemen, entrepreneurs, or teachers, these young men are changing the world through bold actions that capture the essence of the Scouting tradition. In Spirit of Adventure, Townley answers important questions about the future of Scouting and America, while revealing stories of service, courage, and pure excitement that introduce our nation to an inspiring new generation of leaders.The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke
By Sallie Bingham. 2020
"Men who inherit great wealth are respected, but women who do the same are ridiculed. In The Silver Swan, Sallie…
Bingham rescues Doris Duke from this gendered prison and shows us just how brave, rebellious, and creative this unique woman really was, and how her generosity benefits us to this day.” —Gloria Steinem A bold portrait of Doris Duke, the defiant and notorious tobacco heiress who was perhaps the greatest modern woman philanthropistIn The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles one of the great underexplored lives of the twentieth century and the very archetype of the modern woman. “Don’t touch that girl, she’ll burn your fingers,” FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once said about Doris Duke, the inheritor of James Buchanan Duke’s billion-dollar tobacco fortune. During her lifetime, she would be blamed for scorching many, including her mother and various ex-lovers. She established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. This is also the story of the great houses she inhabited, including the classically proportioned limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue, the sprawling Duke Farms in New Jersey, the Gilded Age mansion Rough Point in Newport, Shangri La in Honolulu, and Falcon’s Lair overlooking Beverly Hills. Even though Duke was the subject of constant scrutiny, little beyond the tabloid accounts of her behavior has been publicly known. In 2012, when eight hundred linear feet of her personal papers were made available, Sallie Bingham set out to probe her identity. She found an alluring woman whose life was forged in the Jazz Age, who was not only an early war correspondent but also an environmentalist, a surfer, a collector of Islamic art, a savvy businesswoman who tripled her father’s fortune, and a major philanthropist with wide-ranging passions from dance to historic preservation to human rights. In The Silver Swan, Bingham is especially interested in dissecting the stereotypes that have defined Duke’s story while also confronting the disturbing questions that cleave to her legacy.Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York's Bravest
By Ginger Adams Otis. 2015
In 1919, when Wesley Williams became a New York City firefighter, he stepped into a world that was 100% white…
and predominantly Irish. As far as this city knew, black men in the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) tended horses.Nearly a century later, many things in the FDNY had changed—but not the scarcity of blacks. New York had about 300 black firefighters—roughly 3 percent of the 11,000 New York firefighters in a city of two million African Americans. That made the FDNY a true aberration compared to all the other uniformed departments, like the NYPD. Decades earlier, women and blacks had sued over its hiring practices and won. But the FDNY never took permanent steps to eradicate the inequities, which led to a courtroom show-down between New York City's billionaire Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, and a determined group of black activist firefighters. It was not until 2014 that the city settled the $98 million lawsuit.At the center of this book are stories of courage—about firefighters risking their lives in the line of duty but also risking their livelihood by battling an unjust system. Among them: FDNY Captain Paul Washington, a second generation black firefighter, who spent his multi-decade career fighting to get minorities on the job. He faced an insular culture made up of relatives who never saw their own inclusion as favoritism.Based on author Ginger Adams Otis' years of on the ground reporting, Firefight is an exciting blend of the high-octane energy of firefighting and critical Civil Rights history.If you ever feel: cluttered, scattered, distracted, unfocused, disorganized, preoccupied, overwhelmed, out of control, out of your mind... you can…
change your life! ConZentrate shows you how to master the art of paying attention, in thirty-five clear, practical, simple ways. Whether it's how to focus on a tedious task when the office is buzzing around you, or how to stop procrastinating, or how to keep your home from being a place of overwhelming clutter-- or ever how to tackle the challenges of A.D.D.-- Sam Horn's user-friendly book will inspire you to learn how to conzentrate, and discover the key to peak performance.A powerful and revealing memoir about the pioneers of modern-day feminismPhyllis Chesler was a pioneer of Second Wave Feminism. Chesler…
and the women who came out swinging between 1972-1975 integrated the want ads, brought class action lawsuits on behalf of economic discrimination, opened rape crisis lines and shelters for battered women, held marches and sit-ins for abortion and equal rights, famously took over offices and buildings, and pioneered high profile Speak-outs. They began the first-ever national and international public conversations about birth control and abortion, sexual harassment, violence against women, female orgasm, and a woman’s right to kill in self-defense. Now, Chesler has juicy stories to tell. The feminist movement has changed over the years, but Chesler knew some of its first pioneers, including Gloria Steinem, Kate Millett, Flo Kennedy, and Andrea Dworkin. These women were fierce forces of nature, smoldering figures of sin and soul, rock stars and action heroes in real life. Some had been viewed as whores, witches, and madwomen, but were changing the world and becoming major players in history. In A Politically Incorrect Feminist, Chesler gets chatty while introducing the reader to some of feminism's major players and world-changers.Shaq Talks Back
By Shaquille O'Neal. 2001
Funny, insightful, opinionated, and unexpectedly moving, Shaq Talks Back presents the true voice of one of the NBA's greatest players,…
as he looks back on life during his first championship with the Los Angles Lakers.It's rare to discover a candid sports autobiography--even rare when the author is one of the most recognizable athletes in the world. But in Shaq Talks Back, Shaquille O'Neal for the first time talks frankly about his childhood, his life, his rivalries, and his career, culminating in a dramatic, behind-the-scenes account of the Los Angeles Lakers' drive to the NBA Championship.At seven feet one inch tall and 330 pounds, Shaq has always faced outsized expectations, even as a child when he towered over other kids. Shaq Talks Back is the story of how potential became reality--how someone expected to be a champion finally learned to become one. Beginning with his memory of crying on the court after the Lakers defeated the Indiana Pacers, Shaq takes us back to his younger days in Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey, then to Georgia and finally to Germany, where he began to harness some of his height and strength.From there, he recounts the remarkable progress of his basketball career, changing from a big but inexperienced teenager to a dominant college and professional player. Shaq talks about:* Playing at Louisiana State University for the unpredictable coach Dale Brown* Signing the biggest rookie contract ever with the Orlando Magic-- and going to the NBA Finals for the first time* What happened next: dissention, disappointment, and his decision to leave for Los Angeles* The dysfunctional Lakers who were never able to win the big games* Dealing with egos as he finds the right chemistry with Kobe Bryant, Phil Jackson, and new additions to the team* Rivalries with Alonzo Mourning, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, and others* The trouble with free throws...* Inside the Lakers' comeback from the brink against Portland and the drive to the 2000 NBA championshipGodard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy
By Colin MacCabe. 2003
An intimate portrait of the turmoil that spawned the New Wave in French Cinema, and the story of its greatest…
director, Jean-Luc Godard. Godard's early films revolutionized the language of cinema. Hugely prolific in his first decade--Breathless, Contempt, Pierrot le Fou, Alphaville, and Made in USA are just a handful of the seminal works he directed--Godard introduced filmgoers to the generation of stars associated with the trumpeted sexuality of postwar movies and culture: Brigitte Bardot, Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Anna Karina. As the sixties wore on, however, Godard's life was transformed. The Hollywood he had idolized began to disgust him, and in the midst of the socialist ferment in France his second wife introduced him to the activist student left. From 1968 to 1972, Europe's greatest director worked in the service of Maoist politics, and continued thereafter to experiment on the far peripheries of the medium he had transformed. His extraordinary later works are little seen or appreciated, yet he remains one of Europe's most influential artists.Drawing on his own working experience with Godard and his coterie, Colin MacCabe, in this first biography of the director, has written a thrilling account of the French cinema's transformation in the hands of Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette, and Chabrol--critics who toppled the old aesthetics by becoming, legendarily, directors themselves--and Godard's determination to make cinema the greatest of the arts.The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World
By Christine Louise Hohlbaum. 2009
Overwhelmed by electronic gadgets? Buried under an avalanche of e-mails? Juggling too many tasks and responsibilities? Desperately in need of…
a deep breath and a time-out? For all of us who answer yes to any of these questions, help is on the way. Getting to the heart of our hassled and over-scheduled existence, Christine Louise Hohlbaum cheerfully investigates 101 ways to increase our quality of life and productivity by reevaluating how we perceive and use time. Everyone has their own personal bank account of time, and while we cannot control time itself, we can manage the activities with which we fill the time we have available to us. The Power of Slow gives readers practical, concise directions to change the relationship they have with time and debunks the myths of multitasking, speed, and urgency as the only ways to efficiency.Tips include:· When working on a project on your computer, close all the windows, with the exception of the one you need to do your job.· Learn to say no in a polite and constructive way to favors, invitations, and requests.· Manage your own expectations, as well as those of others, by clearly stating what is possible in the time frame given.· Declare gadget-free zones (both geographical and temporal) to really enjoy your leisure time.· Know when your plate is full.· Make commitments to difficult tasks in five-minute increments and gradually increase the increments.· Save your most favorite or the easiest tasks for last to avoid procrastination.The Power of Slow will help readers identify areas in need of improvement and show them how to become more efficient and less frazzled at work and at home---and live a better, more balanced life.How About Never—Is Never Good for You?: My Life in Cartoons
By Bob Mankoff. 2014
Memoir in cartoons by the longtime cartoon editor of The New YorkerPeople tell Bob Mankoff that as the cartoon editor…
of The New Yorker he has the best job in the world. Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For desert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine's caption contest. Throughout How About Never--Is Never Good for You?, we see his commitment to the motto "Anything worth saying is worth saying funny."Ian McKellen: A Biography
By Garry O'Connor. 2019
The definitive biography of Sir Ian McKellen from an acclaimed biographer In 2001, Ian McKellen put on the robe and…
pointed hat of a wizard named Gandalf and won a place in the hearts of Tolkien fans worldwide. Though his role in the film adaptation of Lord of the Rings introduced him to a new audience, McKellen had a thriving career a lifetime before his visit to Middle Earth. He made his West End acting debut in 1964 in James Saunders’s A Scent of Flowers, but it was in 1980 that he took Broadway by storm when he played Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Tony-Award-winning play Amadeus.He has starred in over four hundred plays and films and he is that rare character: a celebrity whose distinguished political and social service has transcended his international fame to reach beyond the stage and screen. The breadth of his career—professional, personal and political—has been truly staggering: Macbeth (opposite Judi Dench), Iago, King Lear, Chekhov’s Sorin in The Seagull and Becket’s tramp Estragon (opposite Patrick Stewart) in Waiting for Godot. Add to all this his tireless political activism in the cause of gay equality and you have a veritable phenomenon. Garry O’Connor’s Ian McKellen: A Biography probes the heart of the actor, recreating his greatest stage roles and exploring his personal life. Ian McKellen will show readers what makes a great actor tick. His life story has been a constantly developing drama and this biography is the next chapter.Mississippi Sissy
By Kevin Sessums. 2007
Mississippi Sissy is the stunning memoir from Kevin Sessums, a celebrity journalist who grew up scaring other children, hiding terrible…
secrets, pretending to be Arlene Frances and running wild in the South.As he grew up in Forest, Mississippi, befriended by the family maid, Mattie May, he became a young man who turned the word "sissy" on its head, just as his mother taught him. In Jackson, he is befriended by Eudora Welty and journalist Frank Hains, but when Hains is brutally murdered in his antebellum mansion, Kevin's long road north towards celebrity begins. In his memoir, Kevin Sessums brings to life the pungent American south of the 1960s and the world of the strange little boy who grew there."Kevin Sessums is some sort of cockeyed national treasure.” —Michael CunninghamThe Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment
By Geoffrey Kabaservice. 2004
How liberalism and one of the most dramatic eras in American history were shaped by an influential university president and…
his powerful circle of friendsYale's Kingman Brewster was the first and only university president to appear on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and the last of the great campus leaders to become an esteemed national figure. He was also the center of the liberal establishment—a circle of influential men who fought to keep the United States true to ideals and extend the full range of American opportunities to all citizens of every class and color. Using Brewster as his focal point, Geoffrey Kabaservice shows how he and his lifelong friends—Kennedy adviser McGeorge Bundy, Attorney General and statesman Elliot Richardson, New York mayor John Lindsay, Bishop Paul Moore, and Cyrus Vance, pillar of Washington and Wall Street—helped usher this country through the turbulence of the 1960s, creating a legacy that still survives. In a narrative that is as engaging and lively as it is meticulously researched, The Guardians judiciously and convincingly reclaims the importance of Brewster and his generation, illuminating their vital place in American history as the bridge between the old establishment and modern liberalism.A snappy book of simple conversational swaps that reveals how to talk so everyone will listen Words matter. They can…
inform, soothe, sting, reverberate, and leave scars. And the wrong words can turn off—literally—the listener, transforming what should be an exchange of information, feelings, and ideas into dead air time. So many of our dialogues with others are like scripts—we say the same things, ask the same questions, react in the same ways, and get the same (predictably bad) responses. Our verbal interactions with others often illustrate that famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different response. With quick-take visuals and a smart sense of how human beings really talk to each other, What to Say to Get Your Way can turn dead air time into something productive. It's a simple, effective toolbox that will train anyone to say what they mean effectively and powerfully.