The author of How to Be Idle, Tom Hodgkinson, now shares his delightfully irreverent musings on what true independence means and what it takes to be free. The Freedom Manifesto draws on French existentialists, British punks, beat poets, hippies and yippies, medieval thinkers, and anarchists to provide a new, simple, joyful blueprint for modern living. From growing your own vegetables to canceling your credit cards to reading Jean-Paul Sartre, here are excellent suggestions for nourishing mind, body, and spirit witty, provocative, sometimes outrageous, yet eminently sage advice for breaking with convention and living an uncluttered, unfettered, and therefore happier, life.

I grew up in the Old Colony housing project in South Boston and became partners with James "Whitey" Bulger, who I always called Jimmy.Jimmy and I, we were unstoppable. We took what we wanted. And we made people disappear permanently. We made millions. And if someone ratted us out, we killed him. We were not nice guys.I found out that Jimmy had been an FBI informant in 1999, and my life was never the same. When the feds finally got me, I was faced with something Jimmy would have killed me for cooperating with the authorities. I pled guilty to twenty-nine counts, including five murders. I went away for five and a half years.I was brutally honest on the witness stand, and this book is brutally honest, too; the brutal truth that was never before told. How could itOnly three people could tell the true story. With one on the run and one in jail for life, it falls on me.

With The E-Myth Contractor, Michael E. Gerber launches a series of books that apply the E-Myth to specific types of small businesses. The first is aimed at contractors.This book reveals a radical new mind-set that will free contractors from the tyranny of an unprofitable, unproductive routine. With specific tips on topics as crucial as planning, money and personnel management, The E-Myth Contractor teaches readers how to: Implement the ingenious turnkey system of management a means of creating a business prototype that reflects the business owner's unique set of talents and replicating and distributing them among employees and customers. Recognise and manage the four forms of money income, profit, flow and equity. Harness the power of change to expand the company. The book also provides help on a larger level, leading readers towards becoming business visionaries by relinquishing tactical work and embracing strategic work, by letting go to gain control. Once put into action, Gerber's revolutionary ideas promise not only to help contractors build successful businesses, but successful lives as well.

Fabulosity (n): 1: a state of everything that is fabulous 2: a quality ascribed to that which expresses glamour, style, charisma, power, and heartKimora Lee Simmons knows what it means to have fabulosity -- and she wants to tell you how to get it.In this empowering new book, Kimora -- a top model, wife of hip-hop legend Russell Simmons, mother to two daughters, a national media presence, and president and creative director of the multimillion-dollar Baby Phat company -- shares her personal secrets of success and fabulosity.Kimora knows that in today's ultracompetitive world, it's not enough for women just to be smart or dress well. With too much to do and competition everywhere, the savvy woman must know how to combine feminine glamour with professional power, business ambition with personal values, and confidence with heart. Kimora is the living picture of all these things. What are Kimora's secrets to achieving her goals, her signature fabulosityOne is her ability to identify and build upon her own unique talents and strengths. In Kimora's case, she brilliantly combined the two worlds she knows best -- the high fashion and hip-hop scenes -- to create Baby Phat, her ultrasuccessful hip-hop inspired lifestyle brand.How do you uncover and develop your own special talentsKimora shares her step-by-step guide to achieving your wildest dreams, including her 16 laws of success, which cover everything you need to become the woman you want to be.Whether you're college-educated or street smart, just starting out or at the top of your game, Fabulosity has something to say to you. Learn how to cultivate Power, Independence, Confidence, and Positivity in everything you do, whether it's finding Mr. Right, snagging that corner office, or rocking the latest fashion trend. Packed with useful lessons and Kimora's personal tips, this book will be your instruction manual to empowering yourself, turning your individual talents into permanent success, and unleashing your inner fabulosity.

In life as in sports, it's how you play the game that mattersYou don't have to be a star athlete to take away valuable lessons from the world of sports, whether it's learning how to get along with others, to never give up, or to be gracious in victory and defeat. In this companion volume to his New York Times bestseller, The Games Do Count, Brian Kilmeade reveals personal stories of the defining sports moments in the lives of athletes, CEOs, actors, politicians, and historical figures and how what they learned on the field prepared them to handle life and overcome adversity with courage, dignity, and sportsmanship.

Bring a family of four to an NBA game today, and it costs around $500 to watch a bunch of seven-footers take bad shots. Perhaps the quote often attributed to P.T. Barnum is true there really is a sucker born every minute.The NBA is in trouble. And as NBA agent Keith Glass describes it—he's part of the problem! If team owners are willing to throw millions of dollars his way for marginal players, why should he be the only one with the self-restraint to say "no"?In his insightful, funny, and often mind-numbingly bizarre tales of life in the NBA over the last twenty- five years, Keith Glass lets it fly from half-court. He'll tell you how we got to the present state where an agent who makes millions off the game can't sit through one; why our NBA stars couldn't capture Olympic gold; and why the game he loves is in dire need of help.Glass has seen it all as the representative of players like Mark Eaton, the seven-foot-five center found working as a mechanic because he hated basketball; Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who converted to Islam and brought the wrath of the league upon him when he refused to stand for the National Anthem; and first-round draft pick Quincy Douby, who was forced to enter the draft before graduating from Rutgers because of the harsh NCAA rules regarding college eligibility.With informative chapters such as "How to Feed Your Family on Only $14 Million a Year," "Eighty-one Feet of White Centers," and "From 6'11" to the 7- Eleven," Glass shatters the myth of NBA marketing: that everything about the game is great, and that as long as the fans in the luxury boxes are happy and weighed down with expensive merchandise, all is well. But have no fear! Keith Glass doesn't preach about the evils of highlight film slam-dunks he'll just have you falling down laughing as he flagrantly fouls the league that was once the envy of the pro sports world.

On January 20, 2001, the most powerful and arguably most ambitious man in the world relinquished the public stage, reluctantly, at the young age of fifty-four. Since then President Bill Clinton has moved in and out of the shadows of this "exile," leaving the millions who knew him to wonder: How has this man of such outsized talent and passions adjusted to leaving powerBased on more than 150 interviews with the former president's friends, associates, and sometime enemies, Clinton in Exile takes readers from Clinton's last hours in office, through his indulgent personal life and well-publicized humanitarian efforts, to his front-of-camera and behind-the-scenes coordination of his wife's presidential campaign. This is a fascinating and textured portrait of one of the most towering, intriguing, and deeply controversial figures of our time.

Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament. At the center of this heroic life was a passionate twenty-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery itself in the British colonies, a victory achieved just three days before his death in 1833. Metaxas discovers in this unsung hero a man of whom it can truly be said: he changed the world. Before Wilberforce, few thought slavery was wrong. After Wilberforce, most societies in the world came to see it as a great moral wrong.To mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade, HarperSanFrancisco and Bristol Bay Productions have joined together to commemorate the life of William Wilberforce with the feature-length film Amazing Grace and this companion biography, which provides a fuller account of the amazing life of this great man than can be captured on film. This account of Wilberforce's life will help many become acquainted with an exceptional man who was a hero to Abraham Lincoln and an inspiration to the anti-slavery movement in America.

In his groundbreaking book, Marc Hauser puts forth a revolutionary new theory: that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct, unconsciously propelling us to deliver judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Combining his cutting-edge research with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, Hauser explores the startling implications of his provocative theory vis-à-vis contemporary bioethics, religion, the law, and our everyday lives.

On February 13, 2003, a plane carrying three American civilian contractors Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and Tom Howes crash-landed in the mountainous jungle of Colombia. Dazed and shaken, they emerged from the plane bloodied and injured as gunfire rained down around them. As of that moment they were prisoners of the FARC, a Colombian terrorist and Marxist rebel organization. In an instant they had become American captives in Colombia's volatile and ongoing conflict, which has lasted for almost fifty years.In Out of Captivity, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes recount for the first time their amazing tale of survival, friendship, and, ultimately, rescue, tracing their five and a half years as hostages of the FARC. Their story takes you inside one of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations, going behind enemy lines with vivid and haunting imagery. Their words conjure a reality that few people have ever encountered from sleeping on beds literally carved out of the jungle to escaping Colombian military air strikes under the cover of darkness to being bound with steel chains by their captors. Describing backbreaking starvation marches and forced isolation, the authors chronicle their confrontations and interactions with the FARC guerrilla soldiers a motley crew of brainwashed, idealistic teenagers and seasoned vet-erans who've been around long enough to realize that the only way out of the FARC is in a body bag.Though the physical punishments their bodies endured were unrelenting, the psychological battles they waged were the ultimate test of their resolve. With candid detail, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes relate the perilous mental struggles they each experienced, as they grappled with feelings of guilt, fear, and anxiety for the families and lives they'd left behind. Exposing the transformative power of captivity, they show how they turned these fears into strengths, using their memories and their families, their pasts and their futures, to motivate them in their quest for survival. Despite the odds and the conditions, despite the chains and the silence, and despite the often tense relationships they experienced with their fellow Colombian hostages, they had one another, forging a bond that allowed them to cope with the horrific conditions of their confinement. This brotherhood enabled them to persevere through the worst that the FARC threw at them while always reminding them of their ultimate goal: freedom.A harrowing account of one of the longest civilian hostage crises in United States history, Out of Captivity is a remarkable and compelling exploration of how far three Americans were willing to go as they fought to stay alive for themselves, their families, and one another.

Sandra Day O'Connor, America's first woman justice, became the axis on which the Supreme Court turned. She was called the most powerful woman in America, and it was often said that to gauge the direction of American law, one need look only to O'Connor's vote. Then, just one year short of a quarter century on the bench, she surprised her colleagues and the nation by announcing her retirement.Drawing on information from once-private papers of the justices, hundreds of interviews with legal and political insiders, and the insight gained from nearly two decades of covering the Supreme Court, Joan Biskupic examines O'Connor's remarkable career, providing an in-depth account of her transformation from tentative jurist to confident architect of American law. The portrait that emerges is of a complex and multifaceted woman: lawyer, politician, legislator, and justice, as well as wife, mother, A-list society hostess, and competitive athlete. To all appearances, she was the polite lady in pearls, handbag on her arm. But in the back rooms of politics and the law, she was a determined, focused strategist. O'Connor was the feminist who, rather than rebel against the male-dominated system, worked from within -- and succeeded.As Biskupic demonstrates, Justice O'Connor became much more than a "first." During her twenty-four-year tenure, she wrote the decisions on some of the most controversial social battles of our time. O'Connor's tie-breaking opinions on issues such as abortion rights, affirmative action, the death penalty, and religious freedom will have a lasting effect far into the future. O'Connor also cast one of the five votes that cut off the Florida recounts and allowed George W. Bush to take the White House in the 2000 contested presidential election. With an eye to the American people and a keen sense of public attitudes, she worked behind the scenes to shape the law and transform the legal standards by which future cases will be decided.From O'Connor's isolated upbringing on the Lazy B ranch in Arizona through her time as a state legislator to her rise as a justice -- along the way confronting her own personal challenges and crises, including breast cancer -- Biskupic presents a vivid, astute depiction of the justice -- and of the woman beneath the black robe. In so doing, Sandra Day O'Connor also provides an unprecedented look inside the exclusive, famously secretive High Court.

Within is a masterful assembly of the most personal details and gorgeous minutiae of Frank Sinatra's way of living--matters of the heart and heartbreak, friendship and leadership, drinking and cavorting, brawling and wooing, tuxedos and snap-brims--all crafted from rare interviews with Sinatra himself as well as many other intimates, including Tony Bennett, Don Rickles, Angie Dickinson, Tony Curtis, and Robert Wagner, in addition to daughters Nancy and Tina Sinatra. Illustrated with scores of photos, The Way You Wear Your Hat captures the timeless romance and classic style of the fifties and the loose sixties and is a stunning exploration of the Sinatra mystique.

What is it like to be America's First FamilyIn this wonderfully engaging book, Bonnie Angelo, Time correspondent and acclaimed author of First Mothers, probes two hundred years of American history to tell the story of real life within the White House walls how presidents, their wives, children, and extended families worked to create a home in an imposing national monument while attempting to keep their private lives from the public domain.First Families chronicles exhilarating moments as well as dark days at the nation's most famous address, with fascinating, behind-the-headline accounts of picture-book weddings, gossipy love affairs, rollicking children, domestic squabbles, and tragic deaths. From activist wives Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton to reluctant occupants Bess Truman and Jacqueline Kennedy, to those such as Mary Todd Lincoln, Dolley Madison, and madcap debutante Alice Roosevelt, who embraced their new address and status, here is an unforgettable human portrait of our First Families and how they coped, stumbled, or thrived in the national spotlight.

Confident people react positively and successfully to life's problems and challenges. Those who lack confidence often view themselves as victims blaming others or bingeing on drugs, sex, food, or alcohol to mask their feelings of shame or worthlessness.In Complete Confidence, renowned psychotherapist Dr. Sheenah Hankin points the way to a confident life free of self-criticism, anxiety, and immature anger. Her Winning Hand of Comfort technique is a clear, concise, and powerful pre*ion for dealing with everyday situations from resolving conflicts to ending unhealthy habits like overeating, complaining, and procrastinating. This essential handbook will teach you how to retrain your brain to manage your emotions and put your problems into perspective. You will learn how to calm down, clarify your thinking, challenge your blame habit, comfort your negative feelings, and achieve confidence. That is Dr. Hankin's promise.

When Hope Edelman, author of the New York Times bestseller Motherless Daughters, became a parent, she found herself revisiting the loss of her mother in ways she had never anticipated. Now the mother of two young girls, Edelman set out to learn how the loss of a mother to death or abandonment can affect the ways women raise their own children. In Motherless Mothers, Edelman uses her own story as a prism to reveal the unique anxieties and desires that these women experience as they raise their children without the help of a living maternal guide. In an impeccably researched, luminously written book enriched by the voices of the mothers themselves and filled with practical insight and advice from experienced professionals she examines their parenting choices, their triumphs, and their fears, and offers motherless mothers the guidance and support they want and need.

Who's really driving oil and gas pricesHow much oil is leftHow far will Big Oil go to get it, and at what cost to the environment, human rights, the economy, worker safety, public health, and democracy?Here, at last, are the answers we've been looking for and the inside story on Big Oil.In The Tyranny of Oil, Antonia Juhasz investigates the true state of the companies collectively known as "Big Oil," uncovering their unparalleled global financial power, their political dominance, and their increasingly destructive plans for the future. And she tells us what we can do about it.A tool for meaningful change that blends history, original investigative research and reporting, candid interviews with key insiders, and a unique focus on activism, The Tyranny of Oil is required reading for every concerned global citizen.

In this moving memoir, Robert J. Wagner opens his heart to share the romances, the drama, and the humor of an incredible life He grew up in Bel Air next door to a golf course that changed his life. As a young boy, he saw a foursome playing one morning featuring none other than Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Randolph Scott, and Cary Grant. Seeing these giants of the silver screen awed him and fueled his dreams of becoming a movie star. Battling a revolving door of boarding schools and a father who wanted him to forget Hollywood and join the family business, sixteen-year-old Wagner started like any nave kid would walking along Sunset Boulevard, hoping that a producer or director would notice him.Under the mentorship of stars like Spencer Tracy, he would become a salaried actor in Hollywood's studio system among other hot actors of the moment such as his friends Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis. Working with studio mogul Darryl Zanuck, Wagner began to appear in a number of films alongside the most beautiful starlets but his first love was Barbara Stanwyck, an actress twice his age. As his career blossomed, and after he separated from Stanwyck, he met the woman who would change his life forever, Natalie Wood. They fell instantly and deeply in love and stayed together until the stress of their careers hers marching upward, his inexplicably deflating drove them to divorce.Trying to forget the pain, he made more movies and spent his time in Europe with the likes of Steve McQueen, Sophia Loren, Peter Sellers, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Liz Taylor, and Joan Collins. He would meet and marry the beautiful former model and actress Marion Marshall. Together they had a daughter and made their way back to America, where he found himself at the beginning of a new era in Hollywood the blossoming of television. Lew Wasserman and later Aaron Spelling would work with Wagner as he produced and starred in some of the most successful programs in history. Despite his newfound success, his marriage to Marion fell apart. He looked no further than Natalie Wood, for whom he still pined. To the world's surprise, they fell in love all over again, this time more deeply and with maturity. As she settled into a domestic life, raising their own daughter, Courtney, as well as their children from previous marriages, Wagner became the sole provider, reaping the riches of television success. Their life together was cut tragically short, though, when Wood died after falling from their yacht.For the first time, Wagner writes about that tremendously painful time. After a serious bout with depression, he finally resurfaced and eventually married Jill St. John, who helped keep his family and his fractured heart together. With color photographs and never-before-told stories, this is a quintessentially American story of one of the great sons of Hollywood.

How to afford kids and teach them about moneyWe all want to raise smart children. But somewhere between the reading, writing, and arithmetic, one of life's most important lessons is too often overlooked: personal finances. As adults, we interact with money every day, whether by saving, investing, spending, or giving it, but we often forget that kids also face these same decisions from their own unique perspective as they mature. How do we teach today what kids really need to know tomorrow to thrive as financially savvy adultsIn Piggybanking, veteran Wall Street Journal personal-finance writer Jeff D. Opdyke provides a clear and effective plan to help parents raise children to be comfortable and confident managing the daily finances of life.But even before kids arrive, parents face a rash of financial decisions. Accordingly, Piggybanking also deals with the essential problems every struggling young family must face, including how to prepare your budget for a child's arrival, how to choose between single- and dual-income lifestyles, and how to plan for funding a college education.With Opdyke's valuable advice, and with his 15 Rules of Kids Money in hand, parents will be well equipped to create a sound financial foundation for their family and a successful financial life for their kids.

Dr. William Glasser offers a new psychology that, if practiced, could reverse our widespread inability to get along with one another, an inability that is the source of almost all unhappiness. For progress in human relationships, he explains that we must give up the punishing, relationship destroying external control psychology. For example, if you are in an unhappy relationship right now, he proposes that one or both of you could be using external control psychology on the other. He goes further. And suggests that misery is always related to a current unsatisfying relationship. Contrary to what you may believe, your troubles are always now, never in the past. No one can change what happened yesterday.

When Pete Jordan arrives in Amsterdam to study how to make America's cities more bicycle-friendly, he immediately falls in love with the city that already lives life on two wheels. His new bride, Amy Joy, joins Pete, and despite their financial hardships and instability, she eventually finds her own new calling as a bicycle mechanic as Pete discovers the untold history of cycling in Amsterdam.From its beginnings as an elitis t pastime in the 1890s to the street-consuming craze of the 1920s, from the bicycle's role in a citywide resistance to the Nazi occupation to the White Bikes of the 1960s and the bike fishermen of today, Jordan chronicles the evolution of Amsterdam's cycling.Part personal memoir, part history of cycling, part fascinating street-level tour of Amsterdam, In the City of Bikes is the story of a man who loves bikes in a city that loves bikes.

The human brain can actually grow and a bigger brain means better memory, creativity, speed of learning, and ability to concentrate.In Boost Your Brain, Majid Fotuhi, M.D., Ph.D., guides you through the innovative brain fitness program that he has developed for his patients at the NeurExpand Brain Center, an institute dedicated to helping people quickly sharpen their brain performance. You start the program with an assessment of your current brain health and then are given specific brain-fit strategies proven to promote brain acuity and longevity, detailing the latest scientific evidence behind each. Concrete advice is given on how to spur new cell growth, which foods help to build new synapses, what creates brain reserve, and more. Dr. Fotuhi also highlights key behaviors to avoid explaining, for example, how one common sleep disorder can shrink your brain's memory and attention centers by as much as 18 percent!Dr. Fotuhi brings together the latest brain science discoveries about neuroplasticity, which show not only that the size of the brain can be increased within a matter of weeks resulting in better focus, memory, and creativity but that the increase can be scientifically measured. Boost Your Brain is the only book that uses groundbreaking advances in neuroscience to present a clear explanation and pre*ive plan for how to access the benefits of significantly enhanced brain performance at any age.