Heinrich involves us in his quest to get inside the mind of the raven. But as animals can only be spied on by getting quite close, Heinrich adopts ravens, thereby becoming a "raven father," as well as observing them in their natural habitat. He studies their daily routines, and in the process, paints a vivid picture of the ravens' world. At the heart of this book are Heinrich's love and respect for these complex and engaging creatures, and through his keen observation and analysis, we become their intimates too.Heinrich's passion for ravens has led him around the world in his research. Mind of the Raven follows an exotic journey from New England to Germany, and from Montana to Baffin Island in the high Arctic offering dazzling accounts of how science works in the field, filtered through the eyes of a passionate observer of nature. Each new discovery and insight into raven behavior is thrilling to read, at once lyrical and scientific.

For Tony Hawk, it wasn't enough to skate for two decades, to invent more than eighty tricks, and to win more than twice as many professional contests as any other skater.It wasn't enough to knock himself unconscious more than ten times, fracture several ribs, break his elbow, knock out his teeth twice, compress the vertebrae in his back, pop his bursa sack, get more than fifty stitches laced into his shins, rip apart the cartilage in his knee, bruise his tailbone, sprain his ankles, and tear his ligaments too many times to count.No.He had to land the 900. And after thirteen years of failed attempts, he nailed it. It had never been done before. Growing up in Sierra Mesa, California, Tony was a hyperactive demon child with an I44 IQ. He threw tantrums, terrorized the nanny until she quit, exploded with rage whenever he lost a game; this was a kid who was expelled from preschool. When his brother, Steve, gave him a blue plastic hand-me-down skateboard and his father built a skate ramp in the driveway, Tony finally found his outlet--while skating, he could be as hard on himself as he was on everyone around him. But it wasn't an easy ride to the top of the skating game. Fellow skaters mocked his skating style and dubbed him a circus skater. He was so skinny he had to wear elbow pads on his knees, and so light he had to ollie just to catch air off a ramp. He was so desperate to be accepted by young skating legends like Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, and Christian Hosoi that he ate gum from between Steve's toes. But a few years of determination and hard work paid off in multiple professional wins, and the skaters who once had mocked him were now trying to learn his tricks. Tony had created a new style of skating. In Hawk Tony goes behind the scenes of competitions, demos, and movies and shares the less glamorous demands of being a skateboarder--from skating on Italian TV wearing see-through plastic shorts to doing a demo in Brazil after throwing up for five days straight from food poisoning. He's dealt with teammates who lit themselves and other subjects on fire, driving down a freeway as the dashboard of their van burned. He's gone through the unpredictable ride of the skateboard industry during which, in the span of a few years, his annual income shrank to what he had made in a single month and then rebounded into seven figures. But Tony's greatest difficulty was dealing with the loss of his number one fan and supporter--his dad, Frank Hawk. With brutal honesty, Tony recalls the stories of love, loss, bad hairdos, embarrassing '80s clothes, and his determination that had shaped his life. As he takes a look back at his experiences with the skateboarding legends of the '70s, '80s, and '90s, including Stacy Peralta, Eddie Elguera, Lance Mountain, Mark Gonzalez, Bob Burnquist, and Colin Mckay, he tells the real history of skateboarding--and also what the future has in store for the sport and for him.

Inner bonding is the process of connecting our adult thoughts with our instinctual, gut feelings the feelings of the inner child so that we can minimize painful conflict within ourselves. Free of inner conflict, we feel peaceful, open to joy, and open to giving and receiving love.Margaret Paul, coauthor of Healing Your Aloneness, explores how abandonment of the inner child leads to increasingly negative and destructive feelings of low self-worth, codepenclence, addiction, shame, powerlessness, and withdrawal from relationships. Her breakthrough inner bonding process teaches us to heal past wounds through reparenting and clearly demonstrates how we can learn to parent in the present. Real-life examples illustrate the dynamics of the healing process and show the benefits we can expect in every facet of our lives and in all our relationships.Inner Bonding provides the tools we need to forge and maintain the inner unity that makes our family, sexual, work, and social relationships productive, honest, and joyful.

In this rich and riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.

Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manu*s into published novels and short stories.In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manu*. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

The father of cognitive neuroscience and author of Human offers a provocative argument against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and we are therefore not responsible for our actionsA powerful orthodoxy in the study of the brain has taken hold in recent years: Since physical laws govern the physical world and our own brains are part of that world, physical laws therefore govern our behavior and even our conscious selves. Free will is meaningless, goes the mantra; we live in a determined world. Not so, argues the renowned neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga in this thoughtful, provocative book based on his Gifford Lectures one of the foremost lecture series in the world dealing with religion, science, and philosophy. Who's in Chargeproposes that the mind, which is somehow generated by the physical processes of the brain, constrains the brain just as cars are constrained by the traffic they create. Writing with what Steven Pinker has called his trademark wit and lack of pretension, Gazzaniga shows how determinism immeasurably weakens our views of human responsibility; it allows a murderer to argue, in effect, It wasn't me who did it it was my brain. Gazzaniga convincingly argues that even given the latest insights into the physical mechanisms of the mind, there is an undeniable human reality: We are responsible agents who should be held accountable for our actions, because responsibility is found in how people interact, not in brains.An extraordinary book that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications, Who's in Chargeis a lasting contribution from one of the leading thinkers of our time.

Featuring all new material not included in the print edition, including: two deleted chapters, the contents of Neil's Bugout Bag, a disaster survival cheat sheet on how to survive 35 catastrophic events, and ten emergency-preparedness myths that can kill you.Terrorist attacks. Natural disasters. Domestic crackdowns. Economic collapse. Riots. Wars. Disease. Starvation.What can you do when it all hits the fanYou can learn to be self-sufficient and survive without the system.**I've started to look at the world through apocalypse eyes.** So begins Neil Strauss's harrowing new book: his first full-length worksince the international bestseller The Game, and one of the most original-and provocative-narratives of the year.After the last few years of violence and terror, of ethnic and religious hatred, of tsunamis and hurricanes and now of world financial meltdown Strauss, like most of his generation, came to the sobering realization that, even in America, anything can happen. But rather than watch helplessly, he decided to do something about it. And so he spent three years traveling through a country that's lost its sense of safety, equipping himself with the tools necessary to save himself and his loved ones from an uncertain future. With the same quick wit and eye for cultural trends that marked The Game, The Dirt, and How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Emergency traces Neil's white-knuckled journey through today's heart of darkness, as he sets out to move his life offshore, test his skills in the wild, and remake himself as a gun-toting, plane-flying, government-defying survivor. It's a tale of paranoid fantasies and crippling doubts, of shady lawyers and dangerous cult leaders, of billionaire gun nuts and survivalist superheroes, of weirdos, heroes, and ordinary citizens going off the grid.It's one man's story of a dangerous world–and how to stay alive in it.Before the next disaster strikes, you're going to want to read this book. And you'll want to do everything it suggests. Because tomorrow doesn't come with a guarantee...

The true story and true glories of the plants we love to hateFrom dandelions to crabgrass, stinging nettles to poison ivy, weeds are familiar, pervasive, widely despised, and seemingly invincible. How did they come to be the villains of the natural worldAnd why can the same plant be considered beautiful in some places but be deemed a menace in othersIn Weeds, renowned nature writer Richard Mabey embarks on an engaging journey with the verve and historical breadth of Michael Pollan. Weaving together the insights of botanists, gardeners, artists, and writers with his own travels and lifelong fascination, Mabey shows how these "botanical thugs" can destroy ecosystems but also can restore war zones and derelict cities; he reveals how weeds have been portrayed, from the "thorns and thistles" of Genesis to Shakespeare, Walden, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers; and he explains how kudzu overtook the American South, how poppies sprang up in First World War battlefields, and how "American weed" replaced the forests of Vietnam ravaged by Agent Orange. Hailed as "a profound and sympathetic meditation on weeds in relation to human beings" (Sunday Times), Weeds shows how useful these unloved plants can be, from serving as the first crops and medicines, to bur-dock inspiring the invention of Velcro, to cow parsley becoming the latest fashionable wedding adornment. Mabey argues that we have caused plants to become weeds through our reckless treatment of the earth, and he delivers a provocative defense of the plants we love to hate.

In a seaside town of sandy beaches and ocean breezes, Sapphy has never felt so far from the sea. The crowded shore at St. Pirans is nothing like the cove at Sapphy's old home, where she first found her way into the underwater world of Ingo.But Ingo's pull is strong, and it always finds a way. Soon Sapphy and her brother, Conor, are swimming beneath the waves again, riding the currents and teasing their Mer friend Faro. As Sapphy goes deeper into Ingo, she learns to feel more at home in the sea—even as she begins to be aware of its dangers.There's the danger of going in too deep, and breaking the delicate balance between Sapphy's life on land and her life in Ingo. There's the mysterious disappearance of Sapphy's father, an experienced sailor who should never have drowned. And then there's Ingo itself—a restless power as old as the world, as strong as the tides, and more dangerous than anything Sapphy has ever known.

Named one of the "100 Best Books of the Decade" by The Times of London "Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened."A former Nazi officer, Dr. Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. An intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music, he is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Eichmann, Himmler, G?ring, Speer, Heydrich, H?ss—even Hitler himself—play a role in Max's story. An intense and hallucinatory historical epic, The Kindly Ones is also a morally challenging read. It holds a mirror up to humanity—and the reader cannot look away.

In this darkly beautiful and hauntingly vivid novel, Michelle Lovric, acclaimed author of The Floating Book, embarks on an unforgettable journey through the winding alleys and shadowy streets of eighteenth-century Venice and London. With vibrant prose, she weaves together the stories of three disparate yet intertwined characters who find themselves embroiled in a world of murder and secrets. There is Mimosina Dolcezza, the Venetian actress employed as an agente provocatrice by surreptitious European power brokers. By fortune and circumstance, she begins an affair with the elusive Valentine Greatrakes, a roguish fixture within London's medical underworld. Complicating matters for the pair is the presence of the eccentric and strange child-woman Pevenche, a figure whose fate and identity lie at the heart of the book's mystery.Following this shadowy group from the dark environs of London's Bankside to the lively streets of Venice, The Remedy guides us through playhouses, brothels, and convents with luscious details that breathe intoxicating life into the era. Long-listed for the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction, The Remedy is a seductive and suspenseful tale that stays with you long after you've turned the final page.

Screams from the Balcony is a collection of letters chronicling Charles Bukowski's life as he tries to get published and work at a postal office, all while drinking and gambling.

South African born Elon Musk is the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Musk wants to save our planet; he wants to send citizens into space, to form a colony on Mars; he wants to make money while doing these things; and he wants us all to know about it. He is the real-life inspiration for the Iron Man series of films starring Robert Downey Junior. The personal tale of Musk’s life comes with all the trappings one associates with a great, drama-filled story. He was a freakishly bright kid who was bullied brutally at school, and abused by his father. In the midst of these rough conditions, and the violence of apartheid South Africa, Musk still thrived academically and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he paid his own way through school by turning his house into a club and throwing massive parties. He started a pair of huge dot-com successes, including PayPal, which eBay acquired for $1.5 billion in 2002. Musk was forced out as CEO and so began his lost years in which he decided to go it alone and baffled friends by investing his fortune in rockets and electric cars. Meanwhile Musk’s marriage disintegrated as his technological obsessions took over his life ... Elon Musk is the Steve Jobs of the present and the future, and for the past twelve months, he has been shadowed by tech reporter, Ashlee Vance. Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping our Future is an important, exciting and intelligent account of the real-life Iron Man.

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunkWhy is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffectiveCan a sex change boost your salarySuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department-store SantaWhy are doctors so bad at washing their handsHow much good do car seats doWhat's the best way to catch a terroristDid TV cause a rise in crimeWhat do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in commonAre people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?Can eating kangaroo save the planetWhich adds more value: a pimp or a RealtorLevitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.

"Compact and insightful. "--New York Times Book Review "Jack Larkin has retrieved the irretrievable; the intimate facts of everyday life that defined what people were really like."--American Heritage

Tabatha is back to share her secrets of business success . . .With her characteristic savvy expertise and no-nonsense advice, the perfectly coiffed celebrity hairstylist, Tabatha Coffey, returns with her second book, teaching readers that the secret of success is taking charge of your priorities, your future, and your life. Fans of her hit show, Tabatha Takes Over, value Tabatha's sound approach to overhauling failing businesses, and now, in Own It!, she takes to the page to reach out to anyone with a dream: whether you're just beginning, revamping your career, or starting your own enterprise.Sharing her blunt but rock-solid wisdom, Tabatha provides tips for every aspect of business from entrepreneurship, to customer service, to management as well as on the home front, to help women seeking to balance their family lives with their careers. Filled with stories about real people who have faced challenging transitions, in addition to anecdotes from Tabatha's own experiences, this book reveals, through her unflinching honesty, Tabatha's commitment to the dreams and goals of her readers, and her never-say-never attitude when it comes to bringing them to life. Success is the result when you Own It! in all aspects of your life, and Tabatha breaks it down step-by-step as your straight-shooting personal coach to show you how it's done.

A collection of thrilling new and beloved past work from one of America's most celebrated poets, Eileen Myles, a cult icon and modern favoriteEileen Myles's poetry and prose are known for their blend of reality and fiction, the sublime and the ephemeral, in which Myles not only lets her readers peer into existent places, like the East Village in her iconic Chelsea Girls, but also lifts them into dreams, imbuing the landscapes of her writing with the vividness and energy of fantasy.I Must Be Living Twice brings selections from the poet's previous work together with a set of bold new poems, through which Myles continues to refine her sardonic, unapologetic, and fiercely intellectual literary voice. Steeped in the culture of New York City, Myles's stomping grounds and the home of her most well-known work, she provides a wide-open lens into a radical life.

The widely exposed transgressions of priests within the Catholic Church stunned the faithful and sent a new surge of energy through the progressive church reform movement in the United States. Despite the movement's growing profile, the world has only recently learned that Catholic women are the driving force behind reform. Good Catholic Girls is a lively account of these courageous women, as seen through the eyes of an impassioned journalist, Angela Bonavoglia. They include Joan Chittister, the Benedictine nun who refused to obey a Vatican order not to speak at an international conference for women's ordination groups; Mary Ramerman, ordained a Catholic priest before 3,000 jubilant supporters; Frances Kissling, whose fight for women's reproductive rights has shaken the Church at its highest levels; Barbara Blaine, a priest abuse survivor who created the nation's most powerful voice for victims; and Sister Jeannine Gramick, who built a pioneering ministry to gays and lesbians, despite Vatican orders to silence her and ban her work.Backed by supporters worldwide, these and other women are rethinking Catholic theology, changing the face of ministry, and resurrecting the lost lives of female church leaders. As Bonavoglia shows, the hierarchy ignores them at its peril.

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.

When J. P. Morgan called a meeting of New York's financial leaders after the stock market crash of 1907, Hetty Green was the only woman in the room. The Guinness Book of World Records memorialized her as the World's Greatest Miser, and, indeed, this unlikely robber baron -- who parlayed a comfortable inheritance into a fortune that was worth about 1.6 billion in today's dollars -- was frugal to a fault. But in an age when women weren't even allowed to vote, never mind concern themselves with interest rates, she lived by her own rules. In Hetty, Charles Slack reexamines her life and legacy, giving us, at long last, a splendidly "nuanced portrait" (Newsweek) of one of the greatest -- and most eccentric -- financiers in American history.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

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.