In June 1942, Anne Frank received a red-and-white- checked diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in an Amsterdam attic to escape the Nazis. For two years, with ever-increasing maturity, Anne crafted a memoir that has become one of the most compelling documents of modern history. She described life in vivid, unforgettable detail, explored apparently irreconcilable views of human nature people are good at heart but capable of unimaginable evil and grappled with the unfolding events of World War II, until the hidden attic was raided in August 1944.But Anne Frank's diary, argues Francine Prose, is as much a work of art as a historical record. Through close reading, she marvels at the teenage Frank's skillfully natural narrative voice, at her finely tuned dialogue and ability to turn living people into characters. And Prose addresses what few of the diary's millions of readers may know: this book is a deliberate work of art. During her last months in hiding, Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she had hoped would be read by the public after the war.Read it has been. Few books have been as influential for as long, and Prose thoroughly investigates the diary's unique afterlife: the obstacles and criticism Otto Frank faced in publishing his daughter's words; the controversy surrounding the diary's Broadway and film adaptations; and the claims of conspiracy theorists who have cried fraud, along with the scientific analysis that proved them wrong. Finally, Prose, a teacher herself, considers the rewards and challenges of sharing one of the world's most read, and most banned, books with students.How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspireAnne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenaged chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.How has the life and death of one girl become emblematic of the lives and deaths of so many, and why do her words continue to inspireAnne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Francine Prose definitively establishes that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenage chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition.

The first-ever inside look at DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency the maverick and controversial group whose futuristic work has had amazing civilian and military applications, from the Internet to GPS to driverless cars America's greatest idea factory isn't Bell Labs, Silicon Valley, or MIT's Media Lab. It's the secretive, Pentagon-led agency known as DARPA. Founded by Eisenhower in response to Sputnik and the Soviet space program, DARPA mixes military officers with sneaker-wearing scientists, seeking paradigm-shifting ideas in varied fields from energy, robotics, and rockets to peopleless operating rooms, driverless cars, and planes that can fly halfway around the world in just hours. DARPA gave birth to the Internet, GPS, and mind-controlled robotic arms. Its geniuses define future technology for the military and the rest of us.Michael Belfiore was given unprecedented access to write this first-ever popular account of DARPA. Visiting research sites across the country, he watched scientists in action and talked to the creative, fearlessly ambitious visionaries working for and with DARPA. Much of DARPA's work is classified, and this book is full of material that has barely been reported in the general media. In fact, DARPA estimates that only 2 percent of Americans know much of anything about the agency. This fascinating read demonstrates that DARPA isn't so much frightening as it is inspiring it is our future.

In March 2007, twenty-four hours after Mary Weiland dragged her husband Scott's pricey rock-star wardrobe onto their driveway and torched it, she was locked up in a mental hospital. Watching all this were her frightened extended family, a conflicted husband wrestling with demons of his own, and a tabloid industry gone gleeful at the "Bonfire in Toluca Lake!"To the outside world, Weiland had led what seemed to be an enviable life. A successful international model in the nineties, she married her longtime sweetheart famed lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots and, later, Velvet Revolver, Scott Weiland in 2000. Mary was the sane one, went the story it was the tempestuous, unpredictable Scott who was crazy. In her gripping memoir Fall to Pieces, Mary Weiland reveals that the truth is somewhere in between.From her earliest days in San Diego, Weiland displayed signs of trouble: a black depression that sometimes left her immobile for days, a temper that sent her into wild rages she didn't understand, an overdose. But her fierce determination to "have more" led to early success as a model. At sixteen, she fell in love at first sight with Scott Weiland, then an aspiring musician who was hired to drive her to and from modeling gigs. Slowly, her casual relationship with beer and pot grew into an affair with cocaine and heroin that rivaled her love for Scott, who was addicted as well. From rehab to rehab, from breakup to reconciliation to eventual marriage, the couple fought their way back, welcomed the babies they'd dreamed of, and hoped their struggles were behind them. Then came the bonfire breakdown and the full onset of Mary's bipolar disorder, a widely misunderstood and misdiagnosed mental illness that affects more than five million Americans and had been, in fact, stalking Mary Weiland since her teens.With refreshing candor, innate comic timing, and earned wisdom, Weiland recounts the extreme highs and lows of her life, including an unforgettable love affair with the man she always knew she'd marry, the careers and rock tours that took them around the world, and her fight to finally come to grips with the addictions that could have killed her. In her journey to understand and manage her bipolar disorder, she takes the reader on a wild ride into the dark and back into the light.

The face of entertainment has changed radically over the last decade and dangerously so. Stars like Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Amy Winehouse and their media enablers have altered what we consider "normal" behavior. According to addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky and business and entertainment expert Dr. S. Mark Young, a high proportion of celebrities suffer from traits associated with clinical narcissism vanity, exhibitionism, entitlement, exploitativeness and the rest of us, especially young people, are mirroring what we witness nightly on our TV and computer screens. A provocative, eye-opening study, The Mirror Effect sounds a timely warning, raising important questions about our changing culture and provides insights for parents, young people, and anyone who wonders what the cult of celebrity is really doing to America.

At seven o'clock on the morning of April 14, 1865, President Lincoln came out of his bedroom, nodded to the night guard, and started down the hall to his office. At 7:22 the following morning Surgeon General Barnes pressed silver coins to his eyelids.The president's day was, as usual, crammed with meetings and appointments, but he was probably no busier than John Wilkes Booth, the man who would stand behind him at Ford's Theatre that evening. Although the plan had been long in the making, the time and place were not set until eleven that morning.The Day Lincoln Was Shot chronicles the movements of these two men minute by minute until the almost unbearable suspense is shattered with a single gunshot and a leap to the stage. From a thousand bits and scraps of information, Jim Bishop has fashioned an unforgettable tale of tragedy, more gripping than fiction, more alive than any newspaper account.

A rollicking memoir by one of the greatest (and most outrageous) supermodels of the 1970s. Janice Dickinson was not only the first of the supermodels, she endured a nightmarishly traumatic childhood at the hands of a sadistic, sexually and emotionally abusive father, and emerged in the early 1970s as the first lush–lipped 'exotic' brunette to break into a modelling world dominated by sunny California blondes.Janice owned the modelling world in the 1970s. Animated by a fierce desire to be recognised, a fearless spirit, and an insatiable hunger for alcohol, cocaine, sex, and fun, Dickinson appeared on every magazine cover, worked with every major designer and photographer (from Calvin Klein and Gianni Versace to Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon), was married three times, and had passionate affairs or one night stands with everyone from Warren Beatty to Jack Nicholson to Mick Jagger. Though her career waned in the 1990s, her dramatic life story did not: in recent years she has fought a hotly contested paternity suit with Sylvester Stallone, survived a near fatal car wreck during a tequila/marijuana blackout in St Bart's, and waged a raging battle with alcohol and drug addiction.

From the celebrated author of The Dance of Anger comes an extraordinary book about mothering and how it transforms us -- and all our relationships -- inside and out. Written from her dual perspective as a psychologist and a mother, Lerner brings us deeply personal tales that run the gamut from the hilarious to the heart-wrenching. From birth or adoption to the empty nest, The Mother Dance teaches the basic lessons of motherhood: that we are not in control of what happens to our children, that most of what we worry about doesn't happen, and that our children will love us with all our imperfections if we can do the same for them. Here is a gloriously witty and moving book about what it means to dance the mother dance.

Informed and driven by his experience as an upper-middle-class African American who lives and works in a predominately white environment, provocative author Lawrence Otis Graham offers a unique perspective on the subject of race. An uncompromising work that will challenge the mindset of every reader, Member of the Club is a searching book of essays ranging from examining life as a black Princetonian and corporate lawyer to exploring life as a black busboy at an all white country-club. From New York magazine cover stories Invisible Man and Harlem on My Mind to such new essays as "I Never Dated a White Girl" and "My Dinner with Mister Charlie: A Black Man's Undercover Guide to Dining with Dignity at Ten Top New York Restaurants," Graham challenges racial prejudice among White Americans while demanding greater accountability and self-determination from his peers in black America. "In Member of the Club. [Graham writes of] heartbreaking ironies and contradictions, indignities and betrayals in the life of an upper-class black man." --Philadelphia Inquirer "Lawrence Graham Surely knows about the pressures of being beholden to two very different groups." --Los Angeles Times Lawrence Otis Graham is a popular commentator on race and ethnicity. The author of ten other books, his work has appeared in New York magazine, the New York Times and The Best American Essays.

Maurice Hilleman's mother died a day after he was born and his twin sister stillborn. As an adult, he said that he felt he had escaped an appointment with death. He made it his life's work to see that others could do the same. Born into the life of a Montana chicken farmer, Hilleman ran off to the University of Chicago to become a microbiologist, and eventually joined Merck, the pharmaceutical company, to pursue his goal of eliminating childhood disease. Chief among his accomplishments are nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly dread diseases including often devastating ones such as mumps and rubella practically toothless and nearly forgotten; his measles vaccine alone saves several million lives every year. Vaccinated is not a biography; Hilleman's experience forms the basis for a rich and lively narrative of two hundred years of medical history, ranging across the globe and throughout time to take in a cast of hundreds, all caught up, intentionally or otherwise, in the story of vaccines. It is an inspiring and triumphant tale, but one with a cautionary aspect, as vaccines come under assault from people blaming vaccines for autism and worse. Paul Offit clearly and compellingly rebuts those arguments, and, by demonstrating how much the work of Hilleman and others has gained for humanity, shows us how much we have to lose.

Pack. Write. Connect.Garth Callaghan has been crafting lunches and napkin notes placed in those lunches since his daughter, Emma, was a small child. As she grew older, the notes became more meaningful. Shortly after she turned twelve, the notes became a legacy. Garth had been diagnosed with kidney cancer and was given a grim prognosis.Garth has now been diagnosed with cancer four times and been given an 8 percent chance to live long enough to watch Emma graduate from high school. Yet rather than dwell on the dire facts, he takes each day as a gift and a chance to connect with those he loves. And he promised to write 826 napkins so that Emma will have one every day until she graduates from high school no matter what happens. In the pages of this book, Garth continues his mission, spurring readers to appreciate life and the relationships they have through the simple act of composing a handwritten note to a loved one. A reflection on what it means to be a father, what we want to leave behind once we're gone, but mainly a celebration of the human spirit, Napkin Notes is a reminder of the power we all hold to make every moment count.

Dreams -- windows into an inner world of hidden emotion and desire. Only by understanding our dreams can we fully know ourselves. And by recognizing the revealing subconscious meanings of our dreams and using that information in our waking lives, we have a greater opportunity for personal growth and change.Here is the most complete and comprehensive dream dictionary available. An essential resource for, exploring the subconscious mind, it offers thousands of dream symbols and definitions, listed alphabetically. For anyone who wishes to fully realize personal potential, this invaluable guide to dream interpretation provides essential information on how to: Keep a dream journal Recognize and understand your own personal dream symbology Encourage peaceful sloop and pleasant dreams Bring positive dreams to reality Banish bad dreams and gain Insight from nightmares Invoke healing dreams Monitor your personal progress by understanding your dreams a And much, much more! Including: Illuminating exercises, dreamwork techniques, pointers for improving visualization skills, and tips from some of the world's most respected contemporary dream masters.

The secrets of the tarot at your fingertips!TAROT: One of the world's oldest and most trusted methods of psychic divination. Since the time of the ancient Egyptians, only a select few have possessed the skills necessary to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos. But now anyone can learn to read and interpret the most complex Tarot card spreads ... in minutes! This comprehensive, fun and easy-to-use guide can transform even an uninitiated beginner into an expert psychic consultant -- offering step-by-step instruction on how to: Start with one-and two-card readings Move on quickly to the more difficult spreads -- including the traditional Celtic Cross Discover the two cards that reveal your true self Learn the twenty-nine basic questions of the Tarot Understand and specifically interpret what the cards foretell Receive helpful guidance on real-life concerns -- from career and money matters to love and life goals Includes a Complete Reference Guide to the Tarot that can be used with any deck Master the tarot in minutes for a lifetime of enjoyment and enlightenment -- the future is yours.

Why does our popular culture seem so consistently hostile to the values that most Americans hold dearWhy does the entertainment industry attack religion, glorify brutality, undermine the family, and deride patriotismIn this explosive book, one of the nation's best known film critics examines how Hollywood has broken faith with its public, creating movies, television, and popular music that exacerbate every serious social problem we face, from teenage pregnancies to violence in the streets. Michael Medved powerfully argues that the entertainment business follows its own dark obsessions, rather than giving the public what it wants: In fact, the audience for feature films and network television has demonstrated its profound disillusionment in recent years, with disastrous consequences for many entertainment companies. Meanwhile, overwhelming numbers of our fellow citizens complain about the wretched quality of our popular culture--describing the offerings of the mass media as the worst ever. Medved asserts that Hollywood ignores--and assaults--the values of ordinary American families, pursuing a self-destructive and alienated ideological agenda that is harmful to the nation at large and to the industry's own interests. In hard-hitting chapters on "The Attack on Religion," "The Addiction to Violence," "Promoting Promiscuity," "The Infatuation with Foul Language," "Kids Know Best," "Motivations for Madness," and other subjects, Medved outlines the underlying themes that turn up again and again in our popular culture. He also offers conclusive evidence of the frightening real-world impact of these messages on our society and our children. Finally, Medved shows where and how Hollywood took a disastrous wrong turn toward its current crisis, and he outlines promising efforts both in and outside the industry to restore a measure of sanity and restraint to our media of mass entertainment.Sure to elicit strong response, whether it takes the form of cheers of support or howls of enraged dissent, Hollywood vs. America confronts head-on one of the most significant issues of our times.

A daughter's brave and beautiful tribute to a remarkable damaged soul . . . For novelist Minrose Gwin, growing up was a time of chaos and uncertainty, the result ofbeing raised by a parent with a serious mental illness. Life with poet Erin Taylor was unpredictable at best and painful at the worst times, as she spiraled ever deeper into psychosis until her eventual death from cancer. But reading her mother's childhood diary as an adult, Minrose encountered a very different Erin Taylor Clayton Pitner. Her late mother's words, written in the 1930s, revealed a cheerful, perceptive young girl growing up in rural Mississippi who wished for snow that "usually didn't come" a girl with a bright view of the future as she progressed from college student to young mother to published poet, only to have an unbearable darkness close in around her, cruelly suffocating her hopes and dreams. In her poignant and extraordinary memoir Wishing for Snow, Minrose Gwin sets out to rediscover her mother in the poems, letters, newspaper clippings, and quixotic lists that Erin left behind after her death. The result is an unforgettable true story of a Southern family and the tragic figure at its center and a loving daughter's determination to find the mother she never knew.

Most people initially had high hopes for health reform. There clearly are problems that must be fixed. The president had promised that if reform passed, everyone would be able to get health insurance, costs would go down, and we would be able to keep both our doctors and our coverage. And we were told that reform would even cut the deficit and make Medicare stronger.But the law that actually passed became a Rube Goldberg contraption that can’t possibly work and that fails to meet its promises and it will make many problems worse. Officials say it will leave at least 23 million people uninsured, it is already making health insurance more expensive, and it threatens major changes to the coverage that tens of millions of Americans have today. Seniors are frightened that its cuts to future Medicare spending will jeopardize their care, and taxpayers see a flood of red ink far into the future.ObamaCare is leaving a comet tail of broken promises as it steamrolls its way through our economy and into our lives. What happenedHow could there possibly be such a big gap between promise and reality?In Why ObamaCare is Wrong for America, the authors who work for four different conservative think tanks and have led the fight to educate the American people about the impact of ObamaCare explain exactly what the law stipulates and how the law will affect each of us: as patients, as employees, as taxpayers, and as citizens. They also lay out a plan for reforming the law so we can get health care right. Finally, the authors share concrete steps each of us can take to put the breaks on ObamaCare.

Psychic medium Concetta Bertoldi knows how it is: Heaven is perfection. Life on Earth is the tough part.It's here we need to meet challenges, learn lessons, and grow spiritually even as we cope with our sense of "aloneness" and "not enough-ness" or the loss of a loved one. Through all of this our guardian angels, those who have crossed to the Other Side or "the dead guys," as Concetta calls them offer us loving, behind-the-scenes assistance.In Inside the Other Side, Concetta explains the importance of the agreements we make with God before being born into a new physical life. She gives advice on dealing with life's difficult issues: from relationships to a lack of abundance, from illness and aging to coping with loss. Concetta's wise, witty, and uplifting assistance will help you get more in touch with the Other Side so that you can call on your own angels whenever they are needed the most.

Scott Bolzan went to work on December 17, 2008, like any other Wednesday. By that afternoon, he'd lost every memory of his past. Awakening in a hospital with no memory of who he was or how he got there, the forty-six-year-old didn't know that the petite blonde at his side was his wife of twenty-four years, Joan or even what a wife was. He couldn't remember the births of his two young-adult children, the daughter he'd lost, his time as an offensive lineman for the NFLs Cleveland Browns, or his flourishing aviation career. Scott's life and the lives of everyone who loved him were forever changed when he slipped, hit his head, and lost consciousness in his office bathroom, suffering one of the most severe cases of permanent retrograde amnesia on record. With heartrending honesty and no shortage of humor, the Bolzans share their remarkable journey as Scott navigates his way through a now-unfamiliar world. The challenges are initially overwhelming: Scotts debilitating headaches, his relearning of social etiquette (taking cues from The Sopranos!), Joans grief over the loss of the man she married and their shared history, the financial burden of Scotts lost income, his mounting medical bills, and the agony of their twenty-year-old son's struggles with drug addiction. But remarkably, My Life, Deleted is above all else a celebration of extraordinary perseverance, and of the enduring love that emerges when we are most tested. Scott learns to trust his intuition in a way few people ever will, while Joan taps into a well of patience and resourcefulness she didn't know she had. Throughout it all, what unfolds against all odds is an enviable romance as Scott and Joan fall in love all over again.Both gut-wrenching and brimming with optimism, the Bolzans captivating story makes a powerful statement about commitment and the possibility of finding extraordinary opportunity in life's greatest challenges.

I wasn't afraid to fail. It's really as simple as that.As a seven-year-old kid pitching a ball against a brick wall, John Smoltz decided to be a professional baseball player when he grew up. And from that simple decision until his last season on the mound in the major leagues, it was his faith, work ethic, and love for the game even more than God-given talent that propelled him through challenges that would have ruined other athletes. Starting and Closing chronicles John Smoltz's final season in a major league uniform, capping a legendary career that included fourteen years as part of one of the most dominant starting rotations in baseball, a Cy Young Award, and a World Series title all while battling and overcoming "career-ending" injuries. At age forty-one, Smoltz was making yet another unlikely comeback from his fifth surgery. Recounting the story of a season that tested his perseverance and deepened his faith, Smoltz flashes back to watershed moments in the skeptic-defying journey from being one of the best starting pitchers of all time, to closer, to starter again. One of the most intelligent, talented, and passionate players in the game, Smoltz delivers insights into modern major league baseball, its place in popular culture, and the value of competition. He writes with unflinching honesty about becoming a true Christian and finding in his beliefs the peace and strength to stay focused through postseason triumphs and defeats, upheavals in his personal life, and the sting of being sent to the bullpen. What emerges is an inspirational story of spiritual growth and family values, from a man who believed not just in himself but in God's plan for him and one more year.

Once upon a time, salad was iceberg lettuce with a few shredded carrots and a cucumber slice, if you were lucky. A vegetable side was potatoes—would you like those baked, mashed, or au gratinA nice anniversary dinnerWould you rather visit the Holiday Inn or the Regency InnIn Grand Forks, North Dakota, a small town where professors moonlight as farmers, farmers moonlight as football coaches, and everyone loves hockey, one woman has had the answers for more than twenty-five years: Marilyn Hagerty. In her weekly Eatbeat column in the local paper, Marilyn gives the denizens of Grand Forks the straight scoop on everything from the best blue plate specials—beef stroganoff at the Pantry—to the choicest truck stops—the Big Sioux (and its lutefisk lunch special)—to the ambience of the town's first Taco Bell. Her verdict"A cool pastel oasis on a hot day." No-nonsense but wry, earnest but self-aware, Eatbeat also encourages the best in its readers—reminding them to tip well and why—and serves as its own kind of down-home social register, peopled with stories of ex–postal workers turned café owners and prom queen waitresses. Filled with reviews of the mom-and-pop diners that eventually gave way to fast-food joints and the Norwegian specialties that finally faded away in the face of the Olive Garden's endless breadsticks, Grand Forks is more than just a loving look at the shifts in American dining in the last years of the twentieth century—it is also a surprisingly moving and hilarious portrait of the quintessential American town, one we all recognize in our hearts regardless of where we're from.

Being sane has long been defined simply as that bland and nebulous state of not being mentally ill. While writings on madness fill entire libraries, until now no one has thought to engage exclusively with the idea of sanity.In a society governed by indulgence and excess, madness is the state of mind we identify with most keenly. Though ultimately destructive, it is often credited as the wellspring of genius, individuality, and self-expression. Sanity, on the other hand, confounds us. One of the world's most respected psychoanalysts and original thinkers, Adam Phillips redresses this historical imbalance. He strips our lives back to essentials, focusing on how we as human beings, parents, lovers, as people to whom work matters can make space for a sane and well-balanced attitude to living. In a world saturated by tales of dysfunction and suffering, he offers a way forward that is as down-to-earth and realistic as it is uplifting and hopeful.

Complete with behind-the-scenes diary entries from the set of Vachon's best-known fillms, Shooting to Kill offers all the satisfaction of an intimate memoir from the frontlines of independent filmmakins, from one of its most successful agent provocateurs -- and survivors. Hailed by the New York Times as the "godmother to the politically committed film" and by Interview as a true "auteur producer," Christine Vachon has made her name with such bold, controversial, and commercially successful films as "Poison," "Swoon," Kids," "Safe," "I Shot Andy Warhol," and "Velvet Goldmine."Over the last decade, she has become a driving force behind the most daring and strikingly original independent filmmakers-from Todd Haynes to Tom Kalin and Mary Harron-and helped put them on the map.So what do producers do"What don't they do?" she responds. In this savagely witty and straight-shooting guide, Vachon reveals trheguts of the filmmaking process--rom developing a *, nurturing a director's vision, getting financed, and drafting talent to holding hands, stoking egos, stretching every resource to the limit and pushing that limit. Along the way, she offers shrewd practical insights and troubleshooting tips on handling everything from hysterical actors and disgruntled teamsters to obtuse marketing executives.Complete with behind-the-scenes diary entries from the sets of Vachon's best-known films, Shooting To Kill offers all the satisfactions of an intimate memoir from the frontlines of independent filmmaking, from one of its most successful agent provocateurs-and survivors.