Dishwasher is the true story of a man on a mission: to clean dirty dishes professionally in every state in America. Part adventure, part parody, and part miraculous journey of self-discovery, it is the unforgettable account of Pete Jordan's transformation from itinerant seeker into "Dishwasher Pete" unlikely folk hero, writer, publisher of his own cult zine, and the ultimate professional dish dog and how he gave it all up for love.Includes an excerpt from Pete Jordan's new book In the City of Bikes.

Throughout the annals of history, the best of intentions and sometimes the worst have set in motion events with a vastly different outcome than originally intended. In this entertaining, fact-filled chronicle, William Forstchen and Bill Fawcett explore the watersheds of history that began as the best of ideas and ended as the worst of fiascoes.A Holy War The Medieval Crusades for religious liberation become centuries of slaughter and destruction.Sibling Rivalry Leif Erikson spares his sister's life and delays the discovery of the New World for five hundred years.Big Guns Emperor Constantine XI refuses to buy a new supercannon that would let him dominate his enemies, so its creator sells the cannon to the Turks, who then crush Constantinople.With casual wit and subtle insight, It Seemed Like a Good Idea...tucks tongue in cheek and rides out the fiascoes of history.

When Ralph Helfer, now one of Hollywood's top animal behaviorists, first began working, he was shocked by the cruelty that was accepted practice in the field. He firmly believed in "affection training" -- that love, not fear, should be the basis of any animal's development, even when dealing with the most dangerous of creatures. Then Zamba came into his life -- an adorable four-month-old lion cub that went on to prove Helfer's theories resoundingly correct.Over the next eighteen years, Zamba would thrive and grow, and go on to star in numerous motion pictures and television shows -- all the while developing a deep and powerful bond of love and affection with the man who raised him. By turns astonishing, hilarious, and poignant, Zamba is not only the unforgettable story of the relationship that Helfer would come to consider one of the most important in his life but also that of the amazing career and adventures of the greatest lion in the world.

The heartwarming and unforgettable story of a family and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life.Now with photos and new material

A memoir of a father obsessed with control and the daughter who fights his suffocating grasp, House Rules explores the complexities of their compelling and destructive relationship as Rachel fights to escape, and, later, to make sense of what remains of her family.

Stephen B. Oates discerns the historical truth from the mythical legend that surrounds Lincoln in this original and fascinating portrait of America's 16th president.

Highly unorthodox questions and answers about life after life from America's most delightful medium Concetta Bertoldi has been communicating with the "Other Side" since childhood. In her previous book, the bestselling Do Dead People Watch You Shower?, she addressed questions about the afterlife that ranged from the poignant to the provocative. Now she returns with Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs?, a second volume of intriguing observations about our beloved deceased. Moving, funny, and fascinating, it will open your eyes to what really comes after life while offering intimate insights into Concetta's own astonishing life and what her gift has meant to her marriage, her friendships, and the path she was destined to take.

A fascinating exploration of the contents of Agatha Christie's seventy-three private notebooks, including illustrations and two unpublished Poirot stories When Agatha Christie died in 1976, at age eighty-five, she had become the world's most popular author. With sales of more than two billion copies worldwide, in more than one hundred countries, she had achieved the impossible more than one book every year since the 1920s, every one a bestseller.So prolific was Agatha Christie's output sixty-six crime novels, twenty plays, six romance novels under a pseudonym and more than one hundred and fifty short stories it was often claimed that she had a photographic memory. Was this trueOr did she resort over those fifty-five years to more mundane methods of working out her ingenious crimesFollowing the death of Agatha's daughter, Rosalind, at the end of 2004, a remarkable legacy was revealed. Unearthed among her affairs at the family home of Greenway were Agatha Christie's private notebooks, seventy-three handwritten volumes of notes, lists and drafts outlining all her plans for her many books, plays and stories. Buried in this treasure trove, all in her unmistakable handwriting, are revelations about her famous books that will fascinate anyone who has ever read or watched an Agatha Christie story.How did the infamous twist in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd really come aboutWhich very famous Poirot novel started life as an adventure for Miss MarpleWhich books were designed to have completely differ-ent endings, and what were theyWhat were the plot ideas that she considered but rejected?Full of details she was too modest to reveal in her own autobiography, this remarkable new book includes a wealth of excerpts and pages reproduced directly from the notebooks and her letters, plus, for the first time, two newly discovered complete Hercule Poirot short stories never before published.

Massive fire-breathing dragons can be terrifying or kind, evil or accomplices of the hero, but they're never supporting characters, and all expert fantasy artists know how to depict them. Now, for the first time ever, a master dragon drawer reveals his secrets for doing this, taking you along for the ride as he meets these breathtaking creatures face-to-face.Inside you'll find: Easy to follow step-by-step instructions for creating realistic drawings of dragons. Dozens of different types of dragons, along with their unique anatomical and personality traits. An exploration of the digital and hand-drawing steps a dragon drawer must know.

What started as an underground party business—run and dominated by youths and hustlers—grew into the music business's greatest and biggest success. The Underground Is Massive is the first-ever big-picture history of the American electronic dance music underground, viewed through the lens of nineteen parties over thirty years—from the black, gay underground clubs of Chicago and Detroit's elite teen-party scene through nineties "electronica" to today's EDM-festival juggernaut, the book takes in the rise of the Internet and Burning Man, 9/11, and the collapse of the record business—and vividly charts why and how it took nearly three decades after electronic dance music became a global youth soundtrack for it to hit big in the land that birthed it. Through unparalleled insider access to anecdotes, interviews, and history, Michaelangelo Matos demystifies how what once belonged to a devoted audience of casual partiers and diehard dancers has become America's soundtrack of choice and changed the music industry completely. Matos expertly tackles the vast diversity of EDM's musical landscape, its technologically prophetic yet illicit origins, and the path by which underground raves grew into fiercely successful music festivals. Taking in legendary artists from Frankie Knuckles to Moby as well as the biggest names in EDM—Diplo, Skrillex, Deadmau5, David Guetta, Ti?sto, and Daft Punk—Matos's deep mix of sources and wide-lens overview of the culture make every chapter a page-turning revelation.

Using approaches from the Hebrew interpretive tradition to discern the actual events surrounging Jesus' death, Bishop Spong questions the hitorical validity of literal narrative concerned the Ressurection. He asserts that the resurrection story was born in an experience that opened the disciples' eyes to the reality of God and the meaning of Jesus of Nazareth. Spong traces the Christian origins of anti-Semitism to the Church's fabrication of the ultimate Jewish scapegoat, Judas Iscariot. He affirms the inclusiveness of the Christian message and emphasizes the necessity of mutual integrity and respect among Christians and Jews.

Here the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Michael Perry loves this place. He grew up here, and now -- after a decade away -- he has returned.Unable to polka or repair his own pickup, his farm-boy hands gone soft after years of writing, Mike figures the best way to regain his credibility is to join the volunteer fire department. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, he tells a frequently comic tale leavened with moments of heartbreaking delicacy and searing tragedy.

At the height of the Vietnam War protests, twenty-eight-year-old Judith Nies and her husband lived a seemingly idyllic life. Both were building their respective careers in Washington Nies as the speechwriter and chief staffer to a core group of antiwar congressmen, her husband as a Treasury department economist. But when her husband brought home a list of questions from an FBI file with Judith's name on the front, Nies soon realized that her life was about to take a radical turn. Shocked to find herself the focus of an FBI investigation into her political activities, Nies began to reevaluate her role as grateful employee and dutiful wife. A heartfelt memoir and a piercing social commentary, The Girl I Left Behind offers a fresh, candid look at the 1960s. Recounting Nies's courageous journey toward independence and equality, it evaluates the consequences of the feminist movement on the same women who made it happen and on the daughters born in their wake.

For two generations of Americans, reading Ann Landers's daily column was as important as eating breakfast. For nearly fifty years an entire nation turned to this quick-witted, worldly-wise counselor for advice on everything from dinner etiquette to sex. But who was the woman behind the byline?Iowa-born Eppie Lederer was first hired by the Chicago Sun-Times to take over the daily advice column in 1955 -- and over the next half-century she helped shape the nation's social and sexual landscape. Award-winning journalist Rick Kogan was Ann Landers's last editor and close friend, and he paints a fascinating, full-bodied account of the triumphs, the wisdom, the courage, and the trials of one of the twentieth century's most enduring icons -- including her painful lifelong feud with her identical twin sister, "Dear Abby"; her stubborn refusal to shy away from even the most controversial topics; and the tragic breakup of her own thirty-six-year marriage. Filled with remarkable stories shared by people from all walks of life who were profoundly affected by the good sense and guidance of Ann Landers, America's Mom is a moving tribute to a singular woman who has earned an eternal place in our culture ... and our hearts.

The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, "continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal" (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness and to her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott," with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, "Give me chastity, Lord but not yet!" has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up as only Mary Karr can tell it.

When Duane Elgin's classic bestseller, Voluntary Simplicity, was published in 1981, it transformed the lives of thousands and was hailed as the "bible" of the simplicity movement by the Wall Street Journal. Now, for anyone seeking to navigate today's profoundly changing world, Promise Ahead is the powerful sequel to a road map for securing a promising future.

When Katherine Sharpe arrived at her college health center with an age-old complaint, a bad case of homesickness, she received a thoroughly modern response: a twenty-minute appointment and a pre*ion for Zoloft a drug she would take for the next ten years. This outcome, once unlikely, is now alarmingly common. Twenty-five years after Prozac entered the marketplace, 10 percent of Americans over the age of six use an SSRI antidepressant.In Coming of Age on Zoloft, Sharpe blends deeply personal writing, thoughtful interviews, and historical context to achieve an unprecedented portrait of the antidepressant generation. She explores questions of identity that arise for people who start medication before they have an adult sense of self. She asks why some individuals find a diagnosis of depression reassuring, while others are threatened by it. She presents, in young people's own words, their intimate and complicated relationships with their medication. And she weighs the cultural implications of America's biomedical approach to moods.

An aspiring chef's moving account of finding her way in the kitchen and beyond after a tragic accident destroys her sense of smellAt twenty-two, just out of college, Molly Birnbaum spent her nights reading cookbooks and her days working at a Boston bistro, preparing to start training at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America. She knew exactly where she wanted the life ahead to lead: She wanted to be a chef. But shortly before she was due to matriculate, she was hit by a car while out for a run in Boston. The accident fractured her skull, broke her pelvis, tore her knee to shreds and destroyed her sense of smell. The flesh and bones would heal...but her sense of smell?And not being able to smell meant not being able to cook. She dropped her cooking school plans, quit her restaurant job, and sank into a depression.Season to Taste is the story of what came next: how she picked herself up and set off on a grand, entertaining quest in the hopes of learning to smell again. Writing with the good cheer and great charm of Laurie Colwin or Ruth Reichl, she explores the science of olfaction, pheromones, and Proust's madeleine; she meets leading experts, including the writer Oliver Sacks, scientist Stuart Firestein, and perfumer Christophe Laudamiel; and she visits a pioneering New Jersey flavor lab, eats at Grant Achatz's legendary Chicago restaurant Alinea, and enrolls at a renowned perfume school in the South of France, all in an effort to understand and overcome her condition.A moving personal story packed with surprising facts about our senses, Season to Taste is filled with unforgettable de*ions of the smells Birnbaum rediscovers from cinnamon, cedarwood, and fresh bagels to rosemary chicken, lavender, and apple pie as she falls in love, learns to smell from scratch, and starts, once again, to cook.

Translating the beauty and splendor of his native Conamara into a language exquisitely attuned to the wonder of the everyday, John O'Donohue takes us on a moving journey through real and imagined worlds. Divided into three parts -- Approachings, Encounters, and Distances -- Conamara Blues at once reawakens a sense of intimacy with the natural world and a feeling of wonder at the mystery of our relationship to this world. Whether exploring the silent, eternal memory of Conamara or focusing on the power of language and the vagaries of human need and passion, O'Donohue tenderly reveals the fragile vulnerability of love and friendship. The result is a musical, transcendent, and deeply moving series of poems that exemplifies O'Donohue at his finest.Written with penetrating insight and distilled transparence, Conamara Blues offers a singular and lasting imaginative vision of a landscape of hope and possibility -- powerfully exhibiting the mastery of a poet at the height of his lyric powers.

Dad SaidOlestad, we can do i t all. . . .Why do you make me do thisBecause it's beautiful when it all comes together.I don't think it's ever beautiful.One day.Never.We'll see, my father said. Vamanos.From the age of three, Norman Ollestad was thrust into the world of surfing and competitive downhill skiing by the intense, charismatic father he both idolized and resented. While his friends were riding bikes, playing ball, and going to birthday parties, young Norman was whisked away in pursuit of wild and demanding adventures. Yet it were these exhilarating tests of skill that prepared "Boy Wonder," as his father called him, to become a fearless champion and ultimately saved his life.Flying to a ski championship ceremony in February 1979, the chartered Cessna carrying Norman, his father, his father's girlfriend, and the pilot crashed into the San Gabriel Mountains and was suspended at 8,200 feet, engulfed in a blizzard. "Dad and I were a team, and he was Superman," Ollestad writes. But now Norman's father was dead, and the devastated eleven-year-old had to descend the treacherous, icy mountain alone.Set amid the spontaneous, uninhibited surf culture of Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s, this riveting memoir, written in crisp Hemingwayesque prose, recalls Ollestad's childhood and the magnetic man whose determination and love infuriated and inspired him and also taught him to overcome the indomitable. As it illuminates the complicated bond between an extraordinary father and his son, Ollestad's powerful and unforgettable true story offers remarkable insight for us all.

Her mother was a brainy knockout with the sultry beauty of Marilyn Monroe, a raconteur whose fierce wit could shock an audience into hilarity or silence. Her father was a distinguished figure in American letters, the National Book Award–winning author of four of the greatest novels of World War II ever written. A daughter of privilege with a seemingly fairy-tale-like life, Kaylie Jones was raised in the Hamptons via France in the 1960s and '70s, surrounded by the glitterati who orbited her famous father, James Jones. Legendary for their hospitality, her handsome, celebrated parents held court in their home around an antique bar an eighteenth-century wooden pulpit taken from a French village church playing host to writers, actors, movie stars, film directors, socialites, diplomats, an emperor, and even the occasional spy. Kaylie grew up amid such family friends as William Styron, Irwin Shaw, James Baldwin, and Willie Morris, and socialized with the likes of Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, and Kurt Vonnegut.Her beloved father showed young Kaylie the value of humility, hard work, and education, with its power to overcome ignorance, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness, and instilled in her a love of books and knowledge. From her mother, Gloria, she learned perfect posture, the twist, the fear of abandonment, and soul-shattering cruelty. Two constants defined Kaylie's childhood: literature and alcohol. "Only one word was whispered in the house, as if it were the worst insult you could call someone," she writes, "alcoholic was a word my parents reserved for the most appalling and shameful cases drunks who made public scenes or tried to kill themselves or ended up in the street or in an institution. If you could hold your liquor and go to work, you were definitely not an alcoholic." When her father died from heart failure complicated by years of drinking, sixteen-year-old Kaylie was broken and lost. For solace she turned to his work, looking beyond the man she worshipped to discover the artist and his craft, determined that she too would write. Her loss also left her powerless to withstand her mother's withering barbs and shattering criticism, or halt Gloria's further descent into a bottle one of the few things mother and daughter shared. From adolescence, Kaylie too used drink as a refuge, a way to anesthetize her sadness, anger, and terror. For years after her father's death, she denied the blackouts, the hangovers, the lost days, the rage, the depression. Broken and bereft, she began reading her father's novels and those writers who came before and after him and also pursued her own writing. With this, she found the courage to open the door on the truth of her own addiction.Lies My Mother Never Told Me is the mesmerizing and luminously told story of Kaylie's battle with alcoholism and her struggle to flourish despite the looming shadow of a famous father and an emotionally abusive and damaged mother. Deeply intimate, brutally honest, yet limned by humor and grace, it is a beautifully written tale of personal evolution, family secrets, second chances, and one determined woman's journey to find her own voice and the courage to embrace a life filled with possibility, strength, and love.