What does it mean to love a character in a book? Many of us do. Many of us always have. These loves are not the subject of late-night phone conversations with friends or entries in our secret diaries. Yet, as Anne Roiphe reveals in her stunning new book, the characters we know only in fiction live forever in our hearts and our minds. We are what we read. In For Rabbit, with Love and Squalor, Roiphe takes us on a glorious tour of the relationships she has had with the great male characters of American fiction: Holden Caulfield, Robert Jordan, Dick Diver, Rabbit, Nathan Zuckerman, Frank Bascombe, and Max and Mickey. In her literary love life Roiphe is a serial monogamist. When she is involved with one character, she is exclusively his until another comes along. She is an audience, an imaginary lover, and a critic, too -- but a critic only in the way a relative carps or chides at the escapades of a dear one. Though a woman, she identifies with her male heroes; as a woman, she feels love, awe, worry, and tenderness toward them at the same time. Never have the great male creations of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Salinger, Roth and Updike, Ford and Sendak come alive so vibrantly through the critical imagination of a fellow novelist. What we discover on the printed page often carries over to our real-life encounters with the opposite sex, and so Roiphe weaves fragments of her own life story throughout the book. At different times in her life, men like Holden, Rabbit, Nathan, and Frank taught her much of what she knows about how men feel, how they experience love and loss, how they are like and yet unlike her. Piece by piece, Roiphe uncovers a portrait of the male soul, in all its rage and glory. A personal odyssey as well as a celebration of the joys of reading, For Rabbit, with Love and Squalor is a winning blend of self-discovery, criticism, and autobiography that will inspire everyone in love with the written word.
What do you wear to meet your father for the first time? In 2004, Hannah Pool knew more about next season's lipstick colors than she did about Africa: a beauty editor for The Guardian newspaper, she juggled lattes and cocktails, handbags and hangouts through her twenties just like any other beautiful, independent Londoner. Her white, English adoptive relatives were beloved to her and were all the family she needed. Okay, if I treat it as a first date, then I'm on home turf. What image do I want to put across?...Classic, rather than trendy, and if my G-string doesn't pop out, I should be able to carry the whole thing off. Contacted by relatives she didn't know she had, she decided to visit Eritrea, the war-torn African country of her birth, and answer for herself the daunting questions every adopted child asks. Imagine what it's like to never have seen another woman or man from your own family. To spend your life looking for clues in the faces of strangers...We all need to know why we were given up. What Hannah Pool learned on her journey forms a narrative of insight, wisdom, wit, and warmth beyond all expectations. When I stepped off the plane in Asmara, I had no idea what lay ahead, or how those events would change me, and if I'd thought about it too hard I probably wouldn't have gotten farther than the baggage claim. A story that will "send shivers down [your] spine," (The Bookseller), My Fathers' Daughter follows Hannah Pool's brave and heartbreaking return to Africa to meet the family she lost -- and the father she thought was dead.
Judith Viorst is known and loved by readers of all ages, for children’s books such as Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day; nonfiction titles, including the bestseller Necessary Losses; and her collections of humorous poetry, which make perfect gifts for birthdays, Mother’s Day, graduation, Christmas, Chanukah, or at any time of year.Whatever became of Alexander after that famously bad day? And did you know that Judith Viorst is his mother? And what happens to her passion for household neatness and orderliness, her deep devotion to schedules, her compulsive yearning to offer helpful advice when Alexander— now grown up, married, and the father of three—moves his family into his parents’ house? What happens is controlled, and sometimes not so controlled, chaos, as lives and routines are turned upside down and the house is overrun with scattered toys, pacifiers, baby bottles, sippy cups, pink-sequined flip-flops, jigsaw puzzles, and fishy crackers. With her characteristic sparkle and wit, Viorst relates her efforts to (graciously) share space, to become (if only a little bit) more flexible, to (sort of) keep her opinions to herself, and even to eventually figure out how to unlock the safety locks of the baby's (expletives deleted) bouncy seat. She describes how she and her husband, while sometimes longing for the former peace and tranquility of unravished rooms and quiet dinners for two unaccompanied by cries of “Oh, yuck!” survived and relished the extended visit of the Alexander Five. She also opens our eyes to the joys of multigenerational family living and to the unexpected opportunities to grow that life presents—even under the most unlikely circumstances. Several generations of readers surely will relate to this funny and loving book, enhanced throughout by Laura Gibson’s delightful two-color drawings.
On a sunny fall afternoon in 1988, Jon Sarkin was playing golf when, without a whisper of warning, his life changed forever. As he bent down to pick up his golf ball, something strange and massive happened inside his head; part of his brain seemed to unhinge, to split apart and float away. For an utterly inexplicable reason, a tiny blood vessel, thin as a thread, deep inside the folds of his gray matter had suddenly shifted ever so slightly, rubbing up against his acoustic nerve. Any noise now caused him excruciating pain. After months of seeking treatment to no avail, in desperation Sarkin resorted to radical deep-brain surgery, which seemed to go well until during recovery his brain began to bleed and he suffered a major stroke. When he awoke, he was a different man. Before the stroke, he was a calm, disciplined chiropractor, a happily married husband and father of a newborn son. Now he was transformed into a volatile and wildly exuberant obsessive, seized by a manic desire to create art, devoting virtually all his waking hours to furiously drawing, painting, and writing poems and letters to himself, strangely detached from his wife and child, and unable to return to his normal working life. His sense of self had been shattered, his intellect intact but his way of being drastically altered. His art became a relentless quest for the right words and pictures to unlock the secrets of how to live this strange new life. And what was even stranger was that he remembered his former self. In a beautifully crafted narrative, award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Ellis Nutt interweaves Sarkin’s remarkable story with a fascinating tour of the history of and latest findings in neuroscience and evolution that illuminate how the brain produces, from its web of billions of neurons and chaos of liquid electrical pulses, the richness of human experience that makes us who we are. Nutt brings vividly to life pivotal moments of discovery in neuroscience, from the shocking “rebirth” of a young girl hanged in 1650 to the first autopsy of an autistic savant’s brain, and the extraordinary true stories of people whose personalities and cognitive abilities were dramatically altered by brain trauma, often in shocking ways. Probing recent revelations about the workings of creativity in the brain and the role of art in the evolution of human intelligence, she reveals how Jon Sarkin’s obsessive need to create mirrors the earliest function of art in the brain. Introducing major findings about how our sense of self transcends the bounds of our own bodies, she explores how it is that the brain generates an individual “self” and how, if damage to our brains can so alter who we are, we can nonetheless be said to have a soul. For Jon Sarkin, with his personality and sense of self permanently altered, making art became his bridge back to life, a means of reassembling from the shards of his former self a new man who could rejoin his family and fashion a viable life. He is now an acclaimed artist who exhibits at some of the country’s most prestigious venues, as well as a devoted husband to his wife, Kim, and father to their three children. At once wrenching and inspiring, this is a story of the remarkable human capacity to overcome the most daunting obstacles and of the extraordinary workings of the human mind.
Called “brave and heartbreaking” by Elle and “an extraordinary journey” by People, Tracy Ross’s riveting memoir about abuse, survival, and healing is now available in paperback.Tracy Ross’s adult life has been defined by her determination to push herself to the physical limits of what a person can endure. In The Source of All Things, she struggles to reconcile her stepfather’s abuse with her desire to make her family whole again.Tracy’s stepfather first molested her when she was eight years old. But he was also her family’s savior—the man who rescued her mother from deep depression and the protective figure who instilled in her the very passion for nature that saved her life. It wasn’t until she ran away from home at fourteen that her family was forced to confront the abuse that tore them apart. The Source of All Things is a powerful, breathtakingly honest story about a mistake that has taken three decades and thousands of miles of raw wilderness to reconcile. Unfolding in the achingly gorgeous landscapes of Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Alaska, Tracy describes her search for a place in which to heal, the sacredness of the outdoors, and the ways in which nature, at its most wild and challenging, gave her the strength to overcome.
James Heskett, Earl Sasser, and Leonard Schlesinger reveal powerful new evidence that paying close attention to the employee-customer relationship will enable any organization to be a low-cost provider and achieve superior results -- proving that you can have it all, a goal thought inadvisable just a few short years ago. At the heart of this bold assertion is the authors' indisputable conclusion supported by thirty-one years of groundbreaking research: today's employee satisfaction, loyalty, and commitment strongly influences tomorrow's customer satisfaction, loyalty, and commitment and ultimately the organization's profit and growth -- a quantifiable set of associations the authors call the value profit chain. In what may be the most far-reaching study ever undertaken of the strategic importance of the employee-customer relationship, Heskett, Sasser, and Schlesinger offer profound new insights into the life-long value of both employees and customers and the increasingly important concept of employee-relationship management. Readers will discover how organizations as diverse as aluminum maker Alcoa, travel agency Rosenbluth International, and the Willow Creek Community Church treat employees like customers (in the case of Willow Creek, volunteers as well). Conversely, the authors show how advertising agency Merkley Newman Harty and financial services provider ING Direct treat customers like employees, pursuing the ones they want most. At the Vanguard Group, Cisco Systems, and Southwest Airlines, both practices are common. The authors explain how these organizations and many others -- whether large or small, public or private, or not-for-profit -- achieve profitability and growth or the equivalent by leveraging results and process quality to deliver differentiated products and services at the lowest cost. Timely, essential, and important reading, The Value Profit Chain should be readily accessible on the desk of every forward-thinking manager.
A startling new history of the Revolutionary War, told from the perspectives of both the colonists and the colonizers.For generations, Americans have been taught to view the Revolutionary War as a heroic tale of resistance, exclusively from the perspective of the Continental army and the Founding Fathers. Now, in Iron Tears, master historian Stanley Weintraub offers the first account that examines the war from three divergent and distinct vantage points: the battlefields; the American leadership under George Washington; and—most originally—that of England, embroiled in controversy over the war. Iron Tears renders an unprecedented account of the fight for American independence through British eyes, while dramatically narrating the battles that were waged across the Atlantic from Lexington to Yorktown and beyond. As the general, whom the British snobbishly and demeaningly referred to as “Mr. Washington,” rallied to keep his ragged and overmatched Continentals together and create a nation, “iron tears” fell from redcoat muskets and cannons, as well as from the demoralized eyes of the defeated British. Weintraub's multifaceted analysis will forever change and expand our view of the American Revolution.
"Sixteen Americans who fought their way to the Supreme Court"--Front cover.
As Tiger Woods broke down in tears on the 18th green at Royal Liverpool Golf Club, legions of spectators strained their eyes to read the emotion on his face. Like the millions watching on television, they knew that Tiger had just won the British Open, and that his father had recently died. Beyond that, however, they knew precious little -- only that he played with a Nike golf ball, carried an American Express card in his wallet, and, presumably, drove a Buick. They were hungry for more, but everything else about his off-course life, and those of his fellow pros, was forbiddingly well-guarded. Until now. In The Scorecard Always Lies veteran Sports Illustrated golf correspondent Chris Lewis reaches past the results, stats, and sound-bites to focus on the personalities and personal lives of the sport's top players. While embracing all the drama and excitement of the 2006 PGA Tour season, he takes us inside the locker rooms, hotel rooms, and private planes to deliver an unrivaled, behind-thescenes look at the Tour and the men who play it. Lewis spent thirty weeks of the 2006 season on the road with the best golfers in the world, exploring their backstories, motivations, and preoccupations, and collecting telling, character-revealing tales. He bore witness to both the hard work and the privilege that frame their lifestyles. But he also discovered a Tour that to this point remained largely unknown -- one where a player while pursuing dreams of glory might also be suing his agent, going through a messy divorce, or looking to throw down in the locker room with one of his peers. There's John Daly trying to explain how his wife has just been taken off to jail. There's Chris Couch making a midnight, barefoot run through a derelict district of New Orleans, fearing he was about to be kidnapped, and taking refuge in a tattoo parlor. We watch as Tiger Woods tries to deal with losing his father to cancer, while refusing to abandon his fondness for blue humor. We see Phil Mickelson hanging with rock stars, sharing a Masters victory gift with a national championship-winning college football coach, and hooking up a sportswriter with a would-be groupie's phone number. All in all, we get a rare glimpse of the off-course lives of the Tour's stars and their supporting cast. At turns humorous, touching, and insightful, the book sheds new light on every aspect of Tour life, from easygoing Tuesday practice rounds to feverpitch Sunday showdowns, always taking care to show how their off-course concerns inform their every swing. Fans will savor the fullest portrait yet of a group of players who, throughout their successes and struggles, remain unfailingly smart, funny, and engaging, and make up the most intriguing subculture in all of sports.
The world of online networking and communication has exploded in the last decade. Social networking sites, YouTube, and blogs offer hours of entertainment, but have also become important vehicles for activism.The "netroots," as Eric Boehlert calls this phenomenon, have risen to incredible power, and never has that been clearer than in the 2008 presidential election. Bloggers on the Bus traces the major events that rocked the campaign trail and reveals the stories of the online activists who made it all possible. In the tradition of Timothy Crouse’s essential bestseller, The Boys on the Bus, Bloggers on the Bus goes inside the modern world of liberal politics to reveal the stories and scandals at its very heart. Boehlert exposes just how much influence the online community—and especially the blogosphere—had on the outcome of the 2008 elections. Bloggers have set off an industry debate about journalism and privacy and have changed the face of campaign strategy. This ad-hoc, mostly pro bono, community has been able to change, in telling and significant ways, American politics and media. Colored by vivid portraits and character sketches, this book will reveal the new wave of changes that has revolutionized progressive politics. Like the many passionate reporters and observers who came before them, these men and women are breaking new ground every day. Bloggers on the Bus will chronicle that media and political rebellion as it unfolds and introduce readers to the fascinating players involved.
These essays are written by media darling, and former editor of Gawker.com Gould--the smart, young, and hip new female voice of her generation.
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