Synopses & Reviews
The Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race is one of the most challenging sporting events in the world. Every February, a handful of hardy souls spends over two weeks racing sleds pulled by fourteen dogs over 1,023 miles of frozen rivers, icy mountain passes, and spruce forests as big as entire states, facing temperatures that drop to forty degrees below zero on nights that are seventeen hours long.
Why would anyone want to enter this race? John Balzar-who moved to Alaska and lived on the trail-treats us to a vivid account of the grueling race itself, offering an insightful look at the men and women who have moved to this rugged and beautiful place. Readers will also be fascinated by Balzar's account of what goes into the training and care of the majestic dogs who pull the sleds and whose courage, strength, and devotion make them the true heroes of this story.
Review
"...The Nine Truths makes the process easy, understandable, enjoyable, and, of course, satisfying in the as goals are achieved." --Ken Germano, executive director, The American Council on Exercise
Review
"A generous portrait by a true believer." (Scott Vaele, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"...It is a worthwhile addition to the library of any cook, amateur or professional." (Mario Batali, chef and co-owner of Babbo, Po, and Lupa, and host of the Food Network's Molto Mario)
Review
"Gold Digger pairs a scandalous vamp living in an unbridled era with an entertaining and resourceful journalist-delicious!" (USA Today)
Review
"Compelling as any tabloid serial, Gold Digger is a brilliant parable for both the power and perishability of celebrity. Unputdownable." (Neal Gabler, author of Life the Movie)
Review
"A good biography of a bad girl." (The New Yorker)
Review
"Entertaining and meticulously researched." (The New York Times Book Review )
Review
"A welcome addition to the growing body of work on animal thought." (The New York Times Book Review)
Review
"A penetrating, entertaining, and up-to-the-minute book on the minds of animals." (Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct)
Review
"Abe is an entrancing, highly imaginative yet historically
rigorous account." (Chicago Tribune)
Review
"This is docudrama intelligently distilled to the written page...a substantial achievment." (The Wall Street Journal)
Review
"[Short] has combined what is best in journalism and scholarship...He has a large canvas, and he uses it brilliantly." (The New York Times Book Review)
Review
"Extraordinarily powerful." (Nat Hentoff)
Review
"Boldly provocative...A useful and timely alert." (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times)
Review
"A bodacious artifactual romp through history." (Kirkus Reviews)
Review
"...Rachlin's masterful grasp of the material, his employment of rich historical context and his storytelling flair makes history
come alive." (Publishers Weekly)
Review
"[O'Brian] devotees should rejoice at this account
of his life, written with appreciative balance, rich with literary insight." (Los Angeles Times)
Review
"If anger and fighting are ruining your dream of a happy
marriage, Dr. Turndorf's conflict resolution program is for you." (John Gray, Ph.D., author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus)
Review
"A grand and exhilarating tale into refreshingly unknown
territory." (Chicago Tribune)
Review
"...This is a superb guide to merging the spiritual and the financial into a retirement that really works." (John Rubino, author of Main Street, Not Wall Street)
Review
"...This is one man-against-nature battle that has found its bard." (Entertainment Weekly)
Review
"Raising a Thinking Preteen focuses on an age-group whose struggle is too often invisible, and offers an intelligent, practical resource..." (William Pollack, Ph.D., author of Real Boys and faculty, Harvard Medical School)
Review
"A rich, satisfying coming-of-age story." (The New York Times Book Review)
Review
"Shattering, appalling, compelling...One wonders, reading this searing, heartbreaking book, who, indeed, were the savages." (William McPherson, The Washington Post)
Review
"Balzar brings the contest alive in stirring prose that sends tingles up your spine." (USA Today)
Review
"[Balzar's] wonderful account of the Yukon Quest is a treat
without the frostbite." (The Seattle Times)
Review
"A fascinating, brutally honest look at a culture bound only by the will and strength of those who embrace it." (People)
Review
"[Alexis's] stories are thoughtful, lyrical and formally
ingenious." (Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review)
Review
"A surprising and revelatory biography that Westerners would be well advised to read." (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Review
"An appealing and much-needed biography of the man who
created one of literature's renowned eccentrics." (The Wall Street Journal)
Review
"The best book on the Far North since Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams." (Tim Cahill, Los Angeles Times)
Review
"A fascinating pursuit through lands ravaged by poverty and
revolution..." (Entertainment Weekly)
Review
"...combines a formal style, fantastic narratives and a
sensualist's worldview to convey the subtle textures of grief, desire and love... (Bliss Broyard, The Washington Post Book World )
Review
"...magisterial, beautifully written, excellently printed and rich in material from Mr. Short's own researches among those who knew Mao." (The Sunday Telegraph)
Review
"A gripping sympathetic bio that proves that Doyle was
anything but elementary." (Entertainment Weekly)
Review
"...The Nine Truths makes the process easy, understandable, enjoyable, and, of course, satisfying in the end as goals are achieved." (Ken Germano, executive director, The American Council on Exercise)
Review
"...Marriott illuminates both the high art of shark hunting and the good-humored grit of its masters." (Outside)
Synopsis
Forget fad diets -- here's a proven program based on good science and good sense.
The 9 Truths About Weight Loss is the long-awaited antidote to the scores of diet fads that have failed for so many. In a program built on scientific research and practical experience, Daniel S. Kirschenbaum shows us:
--how to consider weight loss as an athletic challenge
--the importance of eating sensibly and tracking your food intake
--how to overcome the inevitable emotional roadblocks
Going beyond trendy quick fixes, The 9 Truths About Weight Loss provides a manageable program for the millions of Americans committed to controlling their weight.
Synopsis
"The 9 Truths About Weight Loss" is the long-awaited antidote to the scores of diet fads that have failed for so many. In a program built on scientific research and practical experience, Daniel S. Kirschenbaum shows us: --how to consider weight loss as an athletic challenge--the importance of eating sensibly and tracking your food intake --how to overcome the inevitable emotional roadblocks Going beyond try quick fixes, The 9 Truths About Weight Loss provides a manageable program for the millions of Americans committed to controlling their weight.
"The 9 Truths About Weight Loss" is the long-awaited antidote to the scores of diet fads that have failed for so many. In a program built on scientific research and practical experience, Daniel S. Kirschenbaum shows us: --how to consider weight loss as an athletic challenge--the importance of eating sensibly and tracking your food intake --how to overcome the inevitable emotional roadblocks Going beyond try quick fixes, The 9 Truths About Weight Loss provides a manageable program for the millions of Americans committed to controlling their weight.
Synopsis
The 9 Truths About Weight Loss is the long-awaited antidote to the scores of diet fads that have failed for so many. In a program built on scientific research and practical experience, Daniel S. Kirschenbaum shows us:--how to consider weight loss as an athletic challenge--the importance of eating sensibly and tracking your food intake --how to overcome the inevitable emotional roadblocks Going beyond try quick fixes, The 9 Truths About Weight Loss provides a manageable program for the millions of Americans committed to controlling their weight.
Description
Now available in paperback-the exquisitely crafted, haunting story collection from theaward-winning author of Childhood.
Following on the heels of his award-winning first novel, Childhood, André Alexis's story collection, Despair, offers further proof of his brilliance and showcases his talent for spinning disturbing but elegant tales.
Emerging from the landscapes and folklores of Trinidad and Canada, Despair reveals a world both recognizable and shockingly strange. A failed artist with beautiful hands is driven by a fetish for injuries in "The Third Terrace." While on an excursion to a bakery, a man wrestles with his capacity for evil deeds in "The Metaphysics of Morals." In "The Night Piece," a boy is haunted by a story about a soucouyant, a vampire in the guise of an old woman.
In these eight beautifully crafted stories, shimmering with malevolence and longing, Alexis has fashioned an underworld and limned it with light.
Do animals think? Can they count? Do they have emotions? Do they feel anger, frustration, hurt, or sorrow? At last, here is a book that provides authoritative answers to these long-standing questions.
Most popular science books tend to misrepresent animals, presenting them either as furry little humans or as creatures that cannot feel at all. Marc D. Hauser, an acclaimed scientist in the field of animal cognition, uses insights from evolutionary theory and cognitive science to examine animal thought without such biases or preconceptions. Hauser treats animals neither as machines devoid of feeling nor as extensions of humans, but as independent beings driven by their own complex impulses.
In prose that is both elegant and edifying, Hauser describes his groundbreaking research in the field, leading his readers on what David Premack, author of The Mind of an Ape, calls "a masterful tour of the animal mind."
Nicaragua's Atlantic coast is home to the most dangerous of fish, the bull shark, a lethal predator with a fearsome appetite and the only shark that swims in inland waters. Braving Nicaragua's hurricane-torn wilderness of mangrove swamps, Edward Marriott joins the last surviving shark fishermen to sail in a dugout canoe and fish for sharks with a hand line.
As Marriott charts the life of the bull shark, its migrations, its voracious feeding patterns, and the treasures it offers -- oil for vitamins, hide for leather, and fins for soup -- he reveals lives spent in fear and awe in the shadow of a monster that can sniff fresh blood a mile away. He also tells a tale of human greed: an elemental community, battered by civil war and natural disasters, is now degraded beyond repair to the point of providing bounty for modern-day pirates.
A gripping narrative of risk and adventure, a poignant record of loss and corruption, Savage Shore confirms Marriott as one of our most original and insightful travel writers.
A brilliant work of historical imagination, Abe immerses the reader in the isolating poverty and difficult circumstances that shaped Abraham Lincoln's character. Marked by his mother's horrible death and the struggle to keep reading and learning in the face of his father's fierce disapproval, Richard Slotkin's Lincoln comes of age during a dramatic flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Along the way, Lincoln and his companions see slavery firsthand and experience the violence -- and the pleasures -- of frontier settlements and the cities of Natchez and New Orleans. Transformed by what he has seen and done, Lincoln returns to make his final break with his father and to step out of the wilderness into New Salem -- and history.
When the Nationalists routed a ragtag Red Army on the Xiang River during the Long March, an earthy Chinese peasant with a brilliant mind moved to a position of power. Eight years after his military success, Mao Tse-tung had won out over more sophisticated rivals to become party chairman, his title for life. Isolated by his eminence, he lived like a feudal emperor for much of his reign after blood purge and agricultural failures took more lives than those killed by either Stalin or Hitler. His virtual quarantine resulted in an ideological/political divide and a devastating reign of terror that became known as the Cultural Revolution.
One cannot understand today's China without first understanding Mao, and Philip Short's masterly assessment -- informed by a wealth of new sources -- allows the reader to understand this colossal figure whose shadow will dominate the twenty-first century.
Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling history The New York Times
called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down"
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition -- published in both hardcover and paperback -- Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.
Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.
Winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Biographical Work, this is "an excellent biography of the man who created Sherlock Holmes" (David Walton, The New York Times Book Review)
This fresh, compelling biography examines the extraordinary life and strange contrasts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the struggling provincial doctor who became the most popular storyteller of his age. From his youthful exploits aboard a whaling ship to his often stormy friendships with such figures as Harry Houdini and George Bernard Shaw, Conan Doyle lived a life as gripping as one of his adventures. Exhaustively researched and elegantly written, Teller of Tales sets aside many myths and misconceptions to present a vivid portrait of the man behind the legend of Baker Street, with a particular emphasis on the Psychic Crusade that dominated his final years-the work that Conan Doyle himself felt to be "the most important thing in the world."
The national bestseller that put "work/family balance" in the headlines and on the White House agenda, with a new introduction by the author.
Newsweek called it "groundbreaking" and The New York Times said it was "truly subversive." When The Time Bind was first published in 1997, it was hailed as the decade's most influential study of our work/family crisis. In the short time since, the crisis has only become more acute.
Arlie Russell Hochschild, bestselling author of The Second Shift, spent three summers at a Fortune 500 company interviewing top executives, secretaries, factory hands, and others. What she found was startling: Though every mother and nearly every father said "family comes first," few of these working parents questioned their long hours or took the company up on chances for flextime, paternity leave, or other "family friendly" policies. Why not? It seems the roles of home and work had reversed: work was offering stimulation, guidance, and a sense of belonging, while home had become the place in which there was too much to do in too little time.
Today Hochschild's findings are more relevant than ever. As she shows in her new introduction, the borders between family and work have become even more permeable. With the Internet extending working hours at home and offices offering domestic enticements -- free snacks, soft music -- to keep employees later at their jobs, The Time Bind stands as an increasingly important warning about the way we live and work.
From one of America's top wordsmiths, a lively survey of words from abroad that make English a truly international language.
With dry wit and remarkable erudition, Eugene Ehrlich takes us on an eye-opening tour of our ever-changing language, showing us how English has, throughout its history, seamlessly sewn words from other languages into its original fabric. The language we call our own has in fact been culled from the languages of ancient invaders, such as the Romans, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the French.
Ehrlich's comprehensive research and vast lingual experience bring to light the origins of some of our most popular and well-used words. For example, graffiti is shown to come from the Italian word meaning "scratches." The word for one of our favorite French pastries, éclair, means "lightning flash." And ketchup comes from the Chinese Ke-Jap, which means "fish sauce."
Ehrlich illuminates the origins, purposes, and meanings of once-foreign words that have become part of the rich texture of our language.
Now available in paperback, Chalmers Johnson's take-no-prisoners account of the consequences of American global policies, hailed as "brilliant and iconoclastic" (Los Angeles Times)
The term "blowback," invented by the CIA, refers to the unintended consequences of American policies. In this incisive and controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth and using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms. From a case of rape by U.S. servicemen in Okinawa to our role in Asia's financial crisis, from our early support for Saddam Hussein to our actions in the Balkans, Johnson reveals the ways in which our misguided policies are planting the seeds of future disaster.
In the wake of the Cold War, the United States has imprudently expanded the commitments it made over the previous forty years, argues Johnson. In Blowback, he issues a warning we would do well to consider: it is time for our empire to demobilize before our bills come due.
Following on his acclaimed Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, and Einstein's Brain, the insatiably curious Harvey Rachlin tells the fascinating and often hilarious tales of forty more historical artifacts, ranging from the obscure to the majestic. Each of these objects is a tangible piece of history with its own story to tell, a story that opens a window to the past, giving us a glimpse into the time from which it came and the people whose lives it affected.
After three blockbuster specials in 1998, History's Lost and Found, based on Rachlin's writing, premiered on the History Channel as a weekly prime-time show in October 1999 and immediately took off. The show is scheduled to air daily in October 2000. Whether tracing the path of the four existing original copies of the Magna Carta or recounting the mad police search to recover Marilyn Monroe's white dress from The Seven Year Itch, Rachlin presents a wonderfully diverse range of tales of historical artifacts.
In January 2000, Patrick O'Brian died in the Westbury Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. Like his life, O'Brian's death was marked by secrecy and confusion, sharpening the curiosity of his many readers who for years have speculated about the man behind the beloved Aubery-Maturin series of novels.
Dean King at last unveils the story of Richard Patrick Russ, a writer and intellectual who emerged from the Second World War as Patrick O'Brian, a persona created by his imagination and refined over decades. To research this book, King crisscrossed Europe to speak to long-lost relatives, friends, and colleagues of his famously reclusive subject; now he has fashioned this wealth of information into a dramatic and compelling narrative. As King meticulously examines the events of O'Brian's life, he deepens and enriches our understanding and appreciation of O'Brian's work.
A proven plan that breaks the conflict cycle, this book is "mandatory reading for every couple that wants to build lasting love"(John Bradshaw).
When fighting breaks out between a husband and wife, the husband's typical reaction is to withdraw, either emotionally or physically. When he does, his wife often becomes more frustrated and angry, which in turn causes the husband to withdraw even more. The fighting escalates with each subsequent outbreak. But it doesn't have to. During her fifteen years of clinical and laboratory research, couples therapist Jamie Turndorf, Ph.D., has developed a proven program that breaks the conflict cycle for ninety percent of the couples who use it. She advises couples to start with a series of cool-down steps and to move on to resolution exercises that will allow them to address difficult issues and subjects in a nonadversarial manner.
Filled with easy-to-follow advice and helpful anecdotes, Turndorf's book gives couples the advice they need to calm an emotional exchange before it becomes a fight. Till Death Do Us Part offers the path to peace that all fighting couples are looking for.
Finally, a time-tested, low-stress investment strategy for the rest of us.
Despite all the media hoopla about manic day traders, tech-stock speculators, and teenage millionaires, most Americans have neither the time nor the inclination to play games with their hard-earned savings. This sensible guide is for the millions of average investors -- from new wage earners to single moms to middle-age workers anticipating retirement -- looking for easy-to-execute, money-making investment strategies. Targeting households with annual incomes below six figures, personal-finance writer John F. Wasik explains how to:
--find extra cash each month to save and invest
--learn from the commonsense tactics of local investment clubs
--take advantage of dividend-reinvestment and direct-purchase plans
--maximize 401Ks, IRAs, and other retirement plans
--select the right mutual funds, government securities, or time-tested stocks
--commit to a strategy and let the money do all the work
Based on proven techniques that minimize risk, stress, and the demands on one's time, The Kitchen-Table Investor contains all the tools investors need to build a safe, secure nest egg.
For the many Americans who want to retire early, this revolutionary investment and lifestyle guide shows the way.
Retire Early turns the traditional plan of delayed gratification -- work hard so you can retire in old age -- on its head. According to John F. Wasik, millions of Americans are in a position to retire early and start living their dreams much sooner than they thought possible. In this invaluable guide, Wasik provides solid financial advice on how to save, invest, and cut costs; how to target personal retirement goals; and, finally, how to realize them. He includes sections on how to raise children without going broke, how to insulate a long retirement with insurance and investment portfolio protection, and how to keep the money coming in by beating the market most of the time. Retire Early is an inspired blend of financial and lifestyle wisdom that redefines how we see retirement and helps us start living the lives we want today.
Forget fad diets -- here's a proven program based on good science and good sense.
The 9 Truths About Weight Loss is the long-awaited antidote to the scores of diet fads that have failed for so many. In a program built on scientific research and practical experience, Daniel S. Kirschenbaum shows us:
--how to consider weight loss as an athletic challenge
--the importance of eating sensibly and tracking your food intake
--how to overcome the inevitable emotional roadblocks
Going beyond trendy quick fixes, The 9 Truths About Weight Loss provides a manageable program for the millions of Americans committed to controlling their weight.
A practical guide to ensuring your child's success in school.
What makes children succeed in school? For the past twenty years, the focus has been on building children's self-esteem to help them achieve more in the classoom. But positive reinforcement hasn't necessarily resulted in measureable academic improvement. Through extensive research, combined with ongoing classroom implementation of their ideas, Deborah Stipek, Dean of the School of Education at Stanford, and Kathy Seal have created a program that will encourage motivation and a love of learning in children from toddlerhood through elementary school.
Stipek and Seal maintain that parents and teachers can build a solid foundation for learning by helping children to develop the key elements of success: competency, autonomy, curiosity, and critical relationships. The authors offer both practical advice on understanding different learning styles and down-to-earth tips about how to manage difficult issues -- competition, grades, praise, bribes, and rewards -- that inevitably arise for parents and teachers.
Most important, Stipek and Seal help parents create an enriching environment for their children at home that will mesh with the school experience and become a positive, effective climate for
learning.
The Gourmet Garage started as a supplier of fresh and exotic ingredients to the chefs and restaurateurs of New York, then became a retailing legend when it opened its doors to the public in 1992. Now, award-winning cookbook authors Sheryl and Mel London and the experts of the Gourmet Garage show you how to select from the dizzying array of ingredients, transforming them into simple, healthful, wonderful meals in your own kitchen.
Unlike other cookbooks, The Gourmet Garage Cookbook is organized by ingredient and takes you through every section of a specialty food store that's one step away from the farmer. Of particular interest to the home cook are the "Shop Smart" tips in each chapter, which tell the reader how to choose the best and freshest products in the marketplace, and "Notes for the Cook," containing dozens of helpful hints for making the most out of those ingredients.
One of America's most talked about Jazz Age personalities, Peggy Hopkins Joyce was the quintessential gold digger, the real-life Lorelei Lee. Married six times, to several millionaires and even a count, Joyce had no discernible talent except self-promotion. A barber's daughter who rose to become a Ziegfeld Girl and, briefly, a movie star, Joyce was the original modern celebrity -- a person famous for being famous. Her scandalous exploits -- spending a million dollars in a week, conducting torrid love affairs with both Charlie Chaplin and Walter Chrysler -- were irresistible to tabloid journalists in search of sensation and to audiences hungry for the glamour her life seemed to promise.
Joyce's march across Broadway, Hollywood, and the nation's front pages was only slowed by the true nemesis of the glamour girl: old age. She died in 1957, alone and forgotten -- until now.
A witty and candid firsthand account -- for writers by a writer -- on how to write, sell, publish, and promote a book.
This invaluable book is written by a working writer -- not a professor, not a publisher, not an editor, not an agent. Robert Masello is a writer who speaks his mind with absolute candor on everything aspiring book authors need to know. He explains the publishing process step by step -what to expect, how it works, and what authors can do at each point to keep things going smoothly. Equally important, Masello has a lot of fun doing it. His book is filled with sometimes hilarious anecdotes from his own experiences in the trenches of publishing.
Writer Tells All covers many topics along the way, both large and small, including the things every writer needs to know: choosing a book topic (fiction or nonfiction), writing the proposal, selecting an agent, understanding book contracts, finding an editor, losing an editor, following the production process from manuscript to bound book, using your own savvy and contacts to maximize the effect of marketing, and publicizing the finished product.
An indispensable guide for parents of preteens -- from the author of the bestselling Raising a Thinking Child.
In her bestselling Raising a Thinking Child, Myrna B. Shure introduced her nationally acclaimed "I Can Problem Solve" program, which helps four to seven-year-olds develop essential skills to resolve daily conflicts and think for themselves. With Raising a Thinking Preteen, Shure has tailored this plan especially for eight-to twelve-year-olds as they approach the unique challenges of adolescence.
The preteen years are often the last opportunity for parents to teach their children how to think for themselves. This book is the only source with a proven plan to help them do just that.
About the Author
Daniel S. Kirschenbaum, Ph.D., is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University and directs the Center for Behavioral Medicine. He consults with corporations, including Weight Watchers and the U.S. Olympic team; his program is orsed by the American Council on Exercise.