They say kids don't come with a set of instructions the AstroTwins beg to differ!Are you a Cancer mom trying to understand your Sagittarius daughterAre you a Virgo mother with a Pisces son who seems to be your polar oppositeWondering why your little Taurus was such an easy baby, but your Aquarius was anything butEven if you've only ever read your horoscope in the back of a magazine for fun or never given astrology a second thought, you'll be amazed at the insights you'll get from Momstrology, a guide to parenting by the stars.From choosing a preschool, to picking hobbies and activities, to understanding what it means when your toddler gets clingy, or your big kid wants to quit soccer, or your tween talks back, Momstrology is a unique guide through all of the phases of your child's life. Offering charts for every astrological sign to decipher your child's good days and bad days, likes and dislikes, and how your child deals with authority, limits, separation, and siblings, the AstroTwins offer real-world advice, from a cosmic perspective, that is always supportive and never overwhelming. With a section devoted to understanding your strengths and challenges as a mom based on your sign and another section that matches you with your children to see how you all mesh together, Momstrology is a parenting guide like no other.Let Momstrology be your go-to guide in the trenches of parenthood...through tears and triumphs and meltdowns and milestones, for every age and stage.

When journalist and fatherhood columnist Josh Levs was denied fair parental leave by his employer after his child was born, he fought back -- and corporate America responded. He became a leading advocate for modern families. In All In, he shows how fatherhood today is far different from previous generations and what it means for our individual lives, families, workplaces, and society. An investigative journalist, expert on modern fatherhood and dad of three, Levs spent years reporting for CNN on air and online and serving as the network's "dad columnist". Prior to CNN, he was a reporter for NPR. His many prizes include six Peabody awards, two Edward R. Murrow awards, and a designation as a Journalist of the Year from the Atlanta Press Club. Levs is also a motivational and keynote speaker. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife and children. Visit his website: www.joshlevs.com

The beloved Hollywood star and New York Times bestselling author of Unsinkable continues her intimate chat with fans in this entertaining collection of anecdotes, stories, jokes, and random musings from a woman who has seen it all—and done most of it. From her acclaimed performances to her headline-making divorce from Eddie Fisher, raising a famous daughter to hitting the road with a successful one-woman show, Debbie Reynolds has been in the spotlight for decades. She’s met presidents, performed for the Queen of England, and partied with kings. A show business icon, she continues to sing and dance—and can drop more names than Andy Cohen. In this fabulous personal tour, she recalls wonderful moments with the greats of the entertainment world—Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Phyllis Diller, and many, many more—sharing stories that shed new light on her life and career and the glittering world of Hollywood then and now. Debbie has plenty to tell—and in Make ’Em Laugh, she dishes it in the warm, down-to-earth voice her fans adore. Debbie shares memories of late night pals and some of the greatest comedians of all time, stories from the big screen and small, and tales of marriage, motherhood, and children. Combining her wicked sense of humor and appealing charm, she reveals the personal side of show business and fame in funny, poignant, and delightful reminiscences. Nothing is off limits: Debbie talks about her sex life, her family drama—and even shares a few secret recipes. As irresistible as the woman at its heart, this collection shows the consummate skill of a beloved entertainer who truly knows how to Make ’Em Laugh.

In 1907, Irish immigrant William Mulholland designed and began to build one of the greatest civil engineering feats in history: the aqueduct that carried water 233 miles from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles allowing this small, resource-challenged desert city to grow into a modern global metropolis. Drawing on new research, Les Standiford vividly captures the larger-than-life engineer and the breathtaking scope of his six-year, $23 million project that would transform a region, a state, and a nation at the dawn of its greatest century.Mulholland, a penniless Dublin immigrant who made his way west as a stowaway on a passenger ship, personifies the American rags-to-riches tale, working from a position as a ditchdigger to become chief engineer of the Los Angeles Water Company. Confronted with a decade-long drought that threatened his adopted city's future, the self taught Mulholland found the answer in the rushing snow melt from the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, nearly 250 miles away. He proposed to build an aqueduct that would outdo any such ever conceived, one that would carry an entire river from its source to Los Angeles, through mountains, over chasms, and across an alternately freezing and blistering terra incognita, because he believed it was the city's only hope.The project brought a simmering-to-this-day firestorm of protest from residents of California's Owens Valley where the waters would be taken, as well as an all-out onslaught from political opponents and vested interests in Los Angeles, who were fearful of losing their stranglehold on the city's yield. But after nine years of struggle, including the efforts of thousands of workmen many of whom lost their lives and the use of engineering techniques and strategies never previously employed, Mulholland turned the gates and loosed the waters that brought an unprecedented wave of development and prosperity to his city and the region.Though the landmark film Chinatown touched on the subject, Mulholland was characterized there as Hollis Mulwray, a colorless pipsqueak easily dispatched by archvillain and developer Noah Cross (John Houston). In real life, however, Mulholland was every bit the equal of any of his foes, a colorful, brook-no-nonsense man of the people who accomplished a feat like no other and became a hero in the process. Water to the Angels is not only a book that provides insight into the seeds of significant ecological concerns of this day, it is also a stirring story of accomplishment against all odds, all the more captivating for being true.As Robert Towne, author of the screenplay for Chinatown suggests, the subject is timeless. "I found the ubiquity of water in everyone's lives to be compelling. Everybody needs water."At a time when the importance of water is being recognized as never before considered by many experts to be the essential resource of the twenty-first century Water to the Angels brings into focus the vigor of a fabled era, the might of a larger-than-life individual, and the scale of a priceless construction project, and sheds critical light on a past that offers insights for our future.

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.

A revised edition of the first book of poems by Stephen Mitchell, the renowned translator of Rilke's poetry, The Book of Job, and the Tao Te Ching. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Evidence of the Afterlife shares the firsthand accounts of people who have died and lived to tell about it. Through their work at the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long and his wife, Jody, have gathered thousands of accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) from all over the world. In addition to sharing the personal narrative of their experiences, visitors to the website are asked to fill out a one hundred item questionnaire designed to isolate specific elements of the experience and to flag counterfeit accounts.The website has become the largest NDE research database in the world, containing over 1,600 NDE accounts. The people whose stories are captured in the database span all age groups, races, and religious affiliations and come from all over the world, yet the similarities in their stories are as awe-inspiring as they are revealing. Using this treasure trove of data, Dr. Long explains how medical evidence fails to explain these reports and why there is only one plausible explanation that people have survived death and traveled to another dimension.

Intended as a comprehensive resource for designers, creative professionals, marketers, and retailers, The Big Book of Packaging contains 384 pages of the most innovative packaging designs from around the world. With over 500 featured designs and profiles of twelve of the world's leading designers, the book is a must-have resource for anyone interested in the future of packaging and design. In light of the recent lift in environmental consciousness, this volume of the Big Book Series will devote one third of its content to the increasingly important subject of green packaging-showing designers and retailers how to package their products creatively, responsibly, and at low cost, factors that will be reflected in the books own packaging/binding as well.The Big Book of Packaging will appeal to designers, students, marketers, retailers, and aesthetes alike, providing a thorough look at what goes into building an effective package and how to think "outside the box."

A collection of eighty all new poems, Acolytes is distinctly Nikki Giovanni, but different. Not softened, but more inspired by love, celebration, memories and even nostalgia. She aims her intimate and sparing words at family and friends, the deaths of heroes and friends, favorite meals and candy, nature, libraries, and theatre. But in between, the deep and edgy conscience that has defined her for decades shines through when she writes about Rosa Parks, hurricane Katrina, and Emmett Till's disappearance, leaving no doubt that Nikki has not traded one approach for another, but simply made room for both.

On the morning of April 2, 1865, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, received a telegram from General Robert E. Lee. There is no more time the Yankees are coming, it warned. Shortly before midnight, Davis boarded a train from Richmond and fled the capital, setting off an intense and thrilling chase in which Union cavalry hunted the Confederate president. Two weeks later, President Lincoln was assassinated, and the nation was convinced that Davis was involved in the conspiracy that led to the crime. Lincoln's murder, autopsy, and White House funeral transfixed the nation. His final journey began when soldiers placed his corpse aboard a special train that would carry him home on the 1,600-mile trip to Springfield. Along the way, more than a million Americans looked upon their martyr's face, and several million watched the funeral train roll by. It was the largest and most magnificent funeral pageant in American history.To the Union, Davis was no longer merely a traitor. He became a murderer, a wanted man with a $100,000 bounty on his head. Davis was hunted down and placed in captivity, the beginning of an intense and dramatic odyssey that would transform him into a martyr of the South's Lost Cause. The saga that began with Manhunt continues with the suspenseful and electrifying Bloody Crimes. James Swanson masterfully weaves together the stories of two fallen leaders as they made their last expeditions through the bloody landscape of a wounded nation.

From Roger Rosenblatt, author of the acclaimed memoirs Making Toast, Kayak Morning, and The Boy Detective, comes another lyrical meditation on and celebration of a universal and elusive subjectIn The Book of Love, Roger Rosenblatt looks at love in all its themes and variations romantic love, courtship, marriage, battle, heartbreak, fury, confusion, melancholy, beauty, delirium, ecstasy; love of lovers, family, friends, of country, of work, writing, solitude, of art; love of nature; love of life itself. Using lines from love songs to create a kind of verbal jazz riff, as infectious as it is engaging, Rosenblatt intersperses thoughts about love with fictional vignettes that capture a variety of lovers in different situations with notes addressed to "you," his wife of fifty years. "The story I have to tell is of you. Of others, too. Other people, other things. But mainly of you. It begins and ends with you. It always comes back to you." Pieces follow upon one another in a continuous progression, as if composing one long song that flows through the entire mystery and magic of what it means to love and be in love. What is this thing called loveLively yet profound, poignant yet joyous, The Book of Love is a triumph of intellect and imagination.

From Pulitzer Prize winner and former poet laureate charles simic comes a dazzling collection of poems as original, meditative, and humorous as the poet himselfThis latest volume of poetry from Charles Simic, one of America's most celebrated poets, demonstrates his revered signature style a mix of wry melancholy and sardonic wit. These seventy luminous poems range in subject from mortality to personal ads, from the simple wonders of nature to his childhood in war-torn Yugoslavia.For more than fifty years, Simic has delighted readers with his innovative form, quiet humor, and his rare ability to limn our interior life and concisely capture the depth of human emotion. These stunning, succinct poems validate and reinforce Simic's importance and relevance in modern poetry.

Alana Stewart and Farrah Fawcett went through it all together. Friends for thirty years, they were an essential part of each other's lives since first meeting at a dinner party in the 1970s. During that time, they supported each other through the trials of Hollywood life while also raising their families, keeping in close contact. But in the fall of 2006, a test of their friendship arose unlike any other they'd faced: Farrah was diagnosed with aggressive rectal cancer. She was determined to fight, and Alana was determined to help her. Together, they were relentless in their pursuit of a cure, traveling halfway around the world as they sought every mainstream, alternative, and experimental therapy available. In all, they spent the better part of the next three years together - Alana by her friend's side as they struggled hand in hand with the unknown. Now, in these intimate and personal diaries, Alana shares her thoughts on the events of the last three years, documenting the journey she and Farrah embarked on as they prayed for a miracle. Reflecting back on the three decades they shared, Alana details what she's learned about her friend and herself as they battled through the trials of this illness. From the importance of selflessness, to the undeniable value of faith, to the remarkable resilience of the human spirit, Alana's day-to-day entries reveal a side of these two friends that the world has never seen. Even in the face of this debilitating disease, Farrah's courage and determination continues to teach us about life . . . and love. Writing candidly about aging, marriage, motherhood, and faith--all topics she and Farrah dealt with together over the years - Alana provides a moving tribute to a woman, once Hollywood's golden girl, and an inspiring celebration of life. My Journey with Farrah is the story of two courageous women who stood by each other through good times, bad times, and now the most trying of times. It is a book that will make people laugh, cry, and rejoice in the power of friendship.

It was 1935. Flame-haired Teddy Lynch finished singing "Alone Together" at the swanky nightclub the New Yorker and left the stage to find a charming stranger at her friends' table. It was Jean Paul Getty, enigmatic oil tycoon and America's first billionaire. In her passionate, unflinchingly honest memoir of two outsize lives entwined, Theodora "Teddy" Getty Gaston—now one hundred years old—reveals the glamorous yet painful story of her marriage to Getty. As formidable as he was, Teddy was equally strong-minded and flamboyant, and their clutches and clashes threw off sparks. She knew the vulnerable side of Getty—he underwent painful plastic surgery and suffered terrible phobias—that few, if any, saw. A vivid love story, Alone Together is also a fascinating glimpse into the twentieth century from the vantage point of one of its most remarkable couples. This is how the other half lived—dinner dances, satin gowns, beach houses, hotel suites, first-class cabins on the Queen Mary. Teddy's extra-ordinary life story moves from the glittering nightclubs of 1930s New York City to Mussolini's Italy, where she was imprisoned by the fascist regime, to California in the golden postwar years, where Paul and Teddy socialized with movie stars and the elite. But life with one of the world's richest men wasn't all glitz and glamour. Though terrifically charismatic in person, Getty grew more miserly as his wealth increased. Worse, he often left Teddy and their son, Timothy, behind for years at a time while he built planes for the war effort in the 1940s or brokered oil deals—he was the first American to lease mineral rights in Saudi Arabia, which made him, at his death, the richest man in the world. Even when Timothy was diagnosed with a brain tumor, Getty complained about medical bills and failed to return to the United States to support his wife and son. When Timothy died at age twelve, the marriage was already falling apart. Teddy's unrelenting spirit, her valiant friendship, and her winning lack of vanity transform what could have been a sob story into a nuanced portrait of a brilliant but stubbornly difficult man and the family he loved but left behind, as well as an enchanting view into a bygone era. This was a life lived from the heart.

In 2010 the U.S. Army Special Operations Command created Cultural Support Teams, a pilot program to put women on the battle field alongside Army Rangers, Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and other special operations teams on sensitive missions in Afghanistan. The idea was that women could access places and people that had remained out of reach and could build relationships woman to woman in ways that male soldiers in a conservative, traditional country could not. Though officially banned from combat, female soldiers could be "attached" to different teams, and for the first time women throughout the Army, the National Guard, and the Reserves heard the call to join male soldiers on special ops missions. Each had her own reason for wanting to serve alongside America's finest fighters for wanting, as the recruiting poster advertised, "to be part of history."In Ashley's War, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon uses exhaustive firsthand reporting and a finely tuned understanding of the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women handpicked from across the Army, and of the remarkable hero at its heart: First Lieutenant Ashley White. Lemmon reveals how First Lieutenant White and the pioneers of CST-2 worked to earn the respect of combat-tested special operations warriors and illuminates the very human stakes of their battlefield successes. Transporting readers into the little-known world of the CSTs, a community of fierce women bound together by valor, danger, and the desire to serve, Ashley's War is a gripping combat narrative and a testament to the unbreakable bond of friendship born of war.

In 2008, Bonner Paddock summited 19,341-foot-high mount kilimanjaro, the world's tallest freestanding mountain. Four years later, he earned the elite triathlete title kona Ironman. Thousands have done each individually. Bonner is the first person with cerebral palsy to do both.Bonner Paddock grew up just wanting to be ordinary. Despite his skinny legs and habit of tripping over nothing, he fought to keep up with his athletic older brothers, learned to battle riptides with his grandfather on close watch, and did everything he could to feel like a regular kid, even when it became clear he wasn't. After being diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age eleven, Bonner didn't let it limit him instead he simply ignored its existence. For the next eighteen years, he guarded the truth about his health, building a normal life and keeping his secret from everyone most of all himself.But the sudden death of a friend's young son named Jake, a boy who also suffered from cerebral palsy, forced Bonner to reevaluate who he was. No longer content striving for normal, he began to pursue one breathtaking experience after another in Jake's memory, never hiding from his physical limitations and, in the process, raising international awareness about cerebral palsy. T is appetite for challenges led him to the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro where, pushing his fragile body to the brink and barely surviving, he braved one mountain only to discover that he still had farther to climb.Embracing his weaknesses to understand his strengths, he then pursued the ultimate adventure: testing his mind, body, and will at the Ironman in Kona, Hawaii, a race regarded by many as the hardest on earth. Along the way he forged a renewed bond with his family and launched a foundation to help disabled children in Africa and at home.In the end, his remarkable journey took him across the globe and introduced him to a compelling cast of characters from Tanzanian mountain guides to top-class surgeons, to disabled children, to champion athletes all of whom inspired his quest. Infused with his irresistible charisma, courage, and heart, and illustrated with sixteen pages of color photos, One More Step is a gripping story of human perseverance that demonstrates how our lives are not defined by limits, but by the moments and lessons that push us past them.

In this gripping narrative history, Al Roker from NBC’s Today and the Weather Channel vividly examines the deadliest natural disaster in American history—a haunting and inspiring tale of tragedy, heroism, and resilience that is full of lessons for today’s new age of extreme weather. On the afternoon of September 8, 1900, two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds and fifteen-foot waves slammed into Galveston, the booming port city on Texas’s Gulf Coast. By dawn the next day, the city that hours earlier had stood as a symbol of America’s growth and expansion was now gone. Shattered, grief-stricken survivors emerged to witness a level of destruction never before seen: Eight thousand corpses littered the streets and were buried under the massive wreckage. Rushing water had lifted buildings from their foundations, smashing them into pieces, while wind gusts had upended steel girders and trestles, driving them through house walls and into sidewalks. No race or class was spared its wrath. In less than twenty-four hours, a single storm had destroyed a major American metropolis—and awakened a nation to the terrifying power of nature. Blending an unforgettable cast of characters, accessible weather science, and deep historical research into a sweeping and dramatic narrative, The Storm of the Century brings this legendary hurricane and its aftermath into fresh focus. No other natural disaster has ever matched the havoc caused by the awesome mix of winds, rain, and flooding that devastated Galveston and shocked a young, optimistic nation on the cusp of modernity. Exploring the impact of the tragedy on a rising country’s confidence—the trauma of the loss and the determination of the response—Al Roker illuminates the United States’s character at the dawn of the “American Century,” while also underlining the fact that no matter how mighty they may become, all nations must respect the ferocious potential of our natural environment.

For nearly three decades political observers have sought to understand the complex relationship between Hillary Clinton's faith and her politics. Now, in this first spiritual biography of the former first lady, acclaimed historian Paul Kengor sets out to answer the elusive question: What does Hillary Clinton believeBased on exhaustive research, God and Hillary Clinton tells the surprising story of Hillary's spiritual evolution, detailing the interaction between her lifelong religious beliefs and her personal history that has made her the politician she is today. Offering an in-depth spiritual chronology of Clinton's life, author Paul Kengor also analyzes the fraught relationship between her faith and her secular policies most notably how she reconciles her pro-choice stance on abortion with her Christian beliefs and scrutinizes how these policies have changed over the course of her political career. What emerges is an unexpected portrait of a political figure whose ideals have been shaped by both the power of her politics and the depth of her religious devotion.

This is an anthology designed to help you get through the stresses of modern life. For rapid and effective relief around the clock, 24-7, without side effects, try a poem -- whatever the time of the day (or night), you can be sure that some poet, past or present, has been there too.To help you find the right poem at the right time, the organization of the book is like that of a book of hours. Starting with Getting Up, it then moves on to those other morning traumas: Stepping on the Scale and Looking into the Mirror.As the day moves on there are sections to cover everything, from Office Politics to Off to School. And if by five p.m. your head is throbbing, dig into the poems in the Take 5 section and let the world recede. By the end of the day you may want to look for inspiration among the poems in Going Home, but if you are intent on veering from the straight and narrow, then turn to the Behaving Badly poems and you'll find you're in good company. Anyone who feels vaguely guilty about settling down in front of the TV instead of taking café society by storm should turn to the poems in the Not Tonight section.

The renowned science writer, mathematician, and bestselling author of Fermat's Last Theorem masterfully refutes the overreaching claims of the "New Atheists," providing millions of educated believers with a clear, engaging explanation of what science really says, how there's still much space for the Divine in the universe, and why faith in both God and empirical science are not mutually exclusive In recent years a highly publicized coterie of scientists and thinkers, including Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and Lawrence Krauss, have vehemently contended that breakthroughs in modern science have disproven the existence of God, asserting we must accept that the creation of the universe came out of nothing, that religion is evil, that evolution fully explains the dazzling complexity of life, and more. However, in this much-needed book, veteran science journalist Amir Aczel profoundly disagrees and convincingly demonstrates that science has not, as yet, provided any definitive proof refuting the existence of God. Based on interviews with eleven Nobel Prize winners and many other prominent physicists, biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, as well as leading theologians and spiritual leaders, Why Science Does Not Disprove God is a fascinating tour through the history of science and a brilliant and incisive analysis of the religious implications of our ever-increasing understanding of life and the universe. Throughout, Aczel reminds us that science, at its best, is about the dispassionate pursuit of truth not a weapon in cultural debates. Respectful of both science and faith and argued from the perspective of no single religious tradition Aczel's book is an essential corrective that should be read by all.

For the first time, Nia Vardalos, writer and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, tells her hilarious and heartfelt bumpy-road-to-parenting story that eventually leads to her meeting an almost-three-year old girl who she knows instantly is her daughter.Vardalos chronicles it all with her signature wit and candor but also weaves in delicious behind-the-scenes Hollywood stories on the making of her films from working with Tom Hanks to meeting Oprah to having dinner with the Queen of England.In Instant Mom, Vardalos writes how moments after she finds out she has been nominated for an Academy Award, she is alone and en route to a fertility clinic, trying yet again for a chance at motherhood, wondering how long she can continue. When she finally adopts her daughter via American Foster Care, Vardalos reveals what really came next how, with only fourteen hours' notice, she and her husband transitioned their preschool aged daughter into their home. The Appendix includes information on how to adopt from all over the world. Vardalos will donate proceeds from the book sales to charities.In her memoir, Instant Mom, Vardalos reveals how she broke into the movie industry, became a working screenwriter and actress . . . and finally became a mom. Instantly.