For seven years, Alison Arngrim played a wretched, scheming, selfish, lying, manipulative brat on one of TV history's most beloved series. Though millions of Little House on the Prairie viewers hated Nellie Oleson and her evil antics, Arngrim grew to love her character and the freedom and confidence Nellie inspired in her.In Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, Arngrim describes growing up in Hollywood with her eccentric parents: Thor Arngrim, a talent manager to Liberace and others, whose appetite for publicity was insatiable, and legendary voice actress Norma MacMillan, who played both Gumby and Casper the Friendly Ghost. She recalls her most cherished and often wickedly funny moments behind the scenes of Little House: Michael Landon's "unsaintly" habit of not wearing underwear; how she and Melissa Gilbert (who played her TV nemesis, Laura Ingalls) became best friends and accidentally got drunk on rum cakes at 7-Eleven; and the only time she and Katherine MacGregor (who played Nellie's mom) appeared in public in costume, provoking a posse of elementary schoolgirls to attack them.Arngrim relays all this and more with biting wit, but she also bravely recounts her life's challenges: her struggle to survive a history of traumatic abuse, depression, and paralyzing shyness; the "secret" her father kept from her for twenty years; and the devastating loss of her "Little House husband" and best friend, Steve Tracy, to AIDS, which inspired her second career in social and political activism. Arngrim describes how Nellie Oleson taught her to be bold, daring, and determined, and how she is eternally grateful to have had the biggest little bitch on the prairie to show her the way.

Correcting the omissions of traditional history, this is a reliable survey of the real and varied roles played by women in the medieval period. . . . Highly recommended. Choice

Over the past few decades, the feminist revolution has had enormous ramifications. Women outnumber their male counterparts in postsecondary education in most of the developed world, and they are about to do the same in the workplace. But what has not been fully documented or explored is that while women have gained equality in many arenas, they also have begun to close the gender gap in terms of alcohol abuse. In the United States alone, more than twenty-three thousand women die from heavy drinking each year. Binge drinking and so-called drunkorexia are on the rise, contributing exponentially to an array of health conditions and cancers.Combining in-depth research with her own personal story of recovery, Ann Dowsett Johnston delivers a groundbreaking examination of a shocking yet little-recognized epidemic threatening society today, what preeminent researcher Sharon Wilsnack believes is a global epidemic of women's drinking. Dowsett Johnston's authority comes from a place of experience. Eight years ago she was an award-winning senior journalist with Canada's major newsweekly magazine Maclean's and popular on the speaking circuit. She seemed to have it all when she was named vice principal of McGill University. In private, the high-functioning professional knew she was wrestling with a demon that had undone her own mother: alcohol addiction. Dowsett Johnston took a very private exit from her professional life and went to rehab. She reentered professional life in 2010, winning the prestigious Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, charged with examining the closing gender gap in the world of risky drinking. Sober now for five years, she retells her struggles with brutal honesty, affording us an unprecedented look at women and drinking that is both moving and enlightening.Dowsett Johnston dissects the psychological, social, and workplace factors that have contributed to this crisis, exploring their far-reaching impact on society at large and individual lives, including her own. Comprehensive and emotionally riveting, Drink is sure to become a modern classic on the topic of women and drinking, much as Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon was for depression. Drink is a brave and powerful story beautifully told and an important investigation into an epidemic that we can no longer afford to ignore.

You are a hot chick; Now start living like one!Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent are back to give you the savvy self-assurance you need to find the perfect balance between work and play. You are a Hot Chick (an empowered, confident woman) who deserves every juicy bit of goodness that life has to offer. Lipper and Vincent help you conquer insecurities and replace them with a positive body image, balanced diet, and smart exercise plan; teach you how to be powerful and feminine (at work) no matter what you do for a living; inspire you to let your hair down and kick up your four-inch heels by creating a heyday that is daring, bold, and unforgettable; and, finally, how to balance it all. Live Like a Hot Chick will motivate you to go out there and get the absolute best that life has to offer, which is exactly what a Hot Chick like you deserves.

A translation of the Kabbalah for the layperson includes a compact presentation of each primary text and features a practical analysis and vital historical information that offer insight into the various aspects of Jewish mysticism.

Unleash the Divine Power of Abundance Author, activist, and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson is often considered one of the defining voices for a new generation of spiritual seekers.Spirituality and Health Williamson focuses on what defines meaningful work and how our jobs can be an extension of our spirituality. As she teaches . . . the sense of endless possibility to reshape our lives unfolds.Huffington Post The Law of Divine Compensation assures us that everything will be all right since the universe is set up to work for us. . . . We are challenged to believe that miracles do happen and what is lacking can become abundant.Spirituality and Practice

Now, in her most practical and pre*ive book to date, bestselling author Debbie Ford delivers a three-part process that empowers us to let go of toxic thoughts and destructive behaviors and discover the deep peace that resides within. The first 7 days are a life-changing release of everything from the past that depletes our vitality and holds us back. When we purge these old emotions like hardened grief, bitter resentments, deadening regrets, and outdated beliefs we begin to feel a new passion for life. During the next 7 days, standing in the present, Ford has us take an honest look at where and who we are today. We'll observe everything and notice what is and what is not working. Standing firmly inside the present moment, we realize our own strength and the ability to respond to the calling of our soul. The final week brings the most exhilarating transformation as we look into the future and discover who we want to be from this day forward.The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse carries us on an incredible personal journey that will open our eyes to all that we are and all that we desire to be. We transform our consciousness and unlock purpose, meaning, and passion in our life.

In the Madre de Dios ("Mother of God") region of Peru, where the Amazon River begins, the cloud forests of the Andes converge with the lowland Amazon rainforest to create the most biodiverse place on the planet. In January 2006, Paul Rosolie, a restless eighteen-year-old hungry for adventure, embarked on a journey to the western Amazon that would transform his life.Venturing alone into the most inaccessible reaches of the jungle, he encountered massive snakes, isolated tribes, prowling jaguars, giant anteaters, poachers trafficking in the black market of endangered species, and much more. He even discovered a new kind of ecosystem now known as a "floating forest." Yet today the primordial depths of the Madre de Dios are in grave danger.In Mother of God, this explorer and conservationist relives his amazing odyssey to the heart of the wildest place on earth. As he delved deeper into his search for the secret Eden, spending extended periods in isolation, he found things he never imagined could exist. But as the legendary explorer Percy Fawcett warned, "The few remaining unknown places of the world exact a price for their secrets."

Culled from Tony Barr's 40 years' experience as a performer, director and acting teacher in Hollywood, this highly praised handbook provides readers with the practical knowledge they need when performing in front of the camera. This updated edition includes plenty of new exercises for honing on-camera skills; additional chapters on imagination and movement; and fresh material on character development, monologues, visual focus, playing comedy and working with directors. Inside tips on the studio system and acting guilds make it particularly helpful for people new to the business, and numerous anecdotes from actors such as Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins and examples from current movies illustrate its many lessons. It is perfect for acting classes, workshops, all actors who work in front of the camera -- and all those who want to.

One man's odyssey into the brutal hive of the National Football LeagueAs an unsigned free agent who rose through the practice squad to the starting lineup of the Denver Broncos, Nate Jackson took the path of thousands of unknowns before him to carve out a professional football career twice as long as the average player. Through his story recounted here from scouting combines to preseason cuts to byzantine film studies to glorious touchdown catches even knowledgeable football fans will glean a new, starkly humanized understanding of the NFL's workweek. Fast-paced, lyrical, dirty, and hilariously unvarnished, Slow Getting Up is an unforgettable look at the real lives of America's best athletes putting their bodies and minds through hell.

The definitive story of Hollywood's most famous couple He was a tough-guy Welshman softened by the affections of a breathtakingly beautiful woman; she was a modern-day Cleopatra madly in love with her own Mark Antony. For nearly a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were Hollywood royalty, and their fiery romance often called "the marriage of the century" was the most notorious, publicized, and celebrated love affair of its day.For the first time, Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner and acclaimed biographer Nancy Schoenberger tell the complete story of this larger-than-life couple, showing how their romance and two marriages commanded the attention of the world. Also for the first time, in exclusive access given to the authors, Elizabeth Taylor herself gives never-revealed details and firsthand accounts of her life with Burton. Drawing upon brand-new information and interviews and on Burton's private, passionate, and heartbreaking letters to Taylor Furious Love sheds new light on the movies, the sex, the scandal, the fame, the brawls, the booze, the bitter separations, and, of course, the fabled jewels. It offers an intimate glimpse into Elizabeth and Richard's privileged world and their elite circle of friends, among them Princess Grace, Montgomery Clift, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine, Marlon Brando, Rex Harrison, Mike Nichols, Laurence Olivier, Robert Kennedy, Tennessee Williams, Nol Coward, John Huston, Ava Gardner, the Rothschilds, Maria Callas, and Aristotle Onassis. It provides an entertaining, eye-opening look at their films, their wildly lucrative reign in Europe and in Hollywood and the price they paid for their extravagant lives.Shocking and unsparing in its honesty, Furious Love explores the very public marriage of "Liz and Dick" as well as the private struggles of Elizabeth and Richard, including Le Scandale, their affair on the set of the notorious epic Cleopatra that earned them condemnation from the Vatican; Burton's hardscrabble youth in Wales; the crippling alcoholism that nearly destroyed his career and contributed to his early death; the medical issues that plagued both him and Elizabeth; and the failed aspirations and shame that haunted him throughout their relationship. As Kashner and Schoenberger illuminate the events and choices that shaped this illustrious couple's story, they demonstrate how the legendary pair presaged America's changing attitudes toward sex, marriage, morality, and celebrity. Yet ultimately, as the authors show, Elizabeth and Richard shared something priceless beyond the drama: enduring love.Addictive and entertaining, Furious Love is more than a celebrity biography; it's an honest yet sympathetic portrait of a man, a woman, and a passion that shocked and mesmerized the world.

The 7 Basic Skills for Turning Conflict into Cooperation. Have you ever opened your mouth to discipline your child, and your parents' nastiest words tumble outIn an era when most parenting books focus on the child, this book supports parents in dealing more positively with themselves as well as their toddler to school age children, offering specific tools to stop policing and pleading with kids and start being the parents we want to be. Based on Dr. Bailey's more than 25 years of work with children, this book explains that how we discipline ourselves is ultimately how we discipline our children. Her "Seven Powers for Self–Control" dramatically increase our ability to keep our cool with our children. These correspond to "Seven Basic Discipline Skills" we can use with our children in conflict situations. As children internalise these skills, they naturally learn "Seven Values for Living," which include integrity, respect, compassion, and responsibility.

Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, Elizabeth I was feared and admired by her enemies. Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power. Her visionary accomplishments were made possible by her daring merchants, gifted rapscallion adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council, including Sir William Cecil, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Sir Nicholas Bacon. All these men contributed their vast genius, power, greed, and expertise to the advancement of England.In The Pirate Queen, historian Susan Ronald offers a fresh look at Elizabeth I, focusing on her uncanny instinct for financial survival and the superior intellect that propelled and sustained her rise. The foundation of Elizabeth's empire was built on a carefully choreographed strategy whereby piracy transformed England from an impoverished state on the fringes of Europe into the first building block of an empire that covered two-fifths of the world.Based on a wealth of historical sources and thousands of personal letters between Elizabeth and her merchant adventurers, advisers, and royal "cousins," The Pirate Queen tells the thrilling story of Elizabeth and the swashbuckling mariners who terrorized the seas, planted the seedlings of an empire, and amassed great wealth for themselves and the Crown.

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of three men and an extraordinary deception: the revered artist Johannes Vermeer; the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him years later; and the con man's mark, Hermann Goering, the fanatical art collector and one of Nazi Germany's most reviled leaders.

This brilliantly original and practical system for parenting children is the brainchild of John Gray, whose Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus books and seminars have helped millions of adults communicate more effectively and lovingly with each other. Based on this idea that children respond better to positive rather than negative reinforcement, the Children Are from Heaven program concentrates on rewarding, not punishing, children and fostering their innate desire to please their parents.Central to this approach are the five positive messages your children need to learn again and again:It's okay to be different.It's okay to make mistakes.It's okay to express negative emotions.It's okay to want more.It's okay to say no, but remember Mom and Dad are the bosses.

Washington, D.C., is home to the most influential power brokers in the world. But how did we come to call D.C. a place once described as a mere swamp "producing nothing except myriads of toads and frogs (of enormous size)," and which was strategically indefensible, captive to the politics of slavery, and the target of unbridled land speculation our nation's capitalIn Washington, acclaimed, award-winning author Fergus M. Bordewich turns to the backroom deal-making and shifting alliances among our Founding Fathers to find out, and in doing so pulls back the curtain on the lives of the slaves who actually built the city. The answers revealed in this eye-opening book are not only surprising but also illuminate a story of unexpected triumph over a multitude of political and financial obstacles, including fraudulent real estate deals, overextended financiers, and management more apt for a banana republic than an emerging world power.In a page-turning work that reveals the hidden and unsavory side to the nation's beginnings, Bordewich once again brings his novelist's eye to a little-known chapter of American history.

Her canvases were the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; the Great Terror; America at the time of Washington and Jefferson; Paris under the Directoire and then under Napoleon; Regency London; the battle of Waterloo; and, for the last years of her life, the Italian ducal courts. Like Saint-Simon at Versailles, Samuel Pepys during the Great Fire of London, or the Goncourt brothers in nineteenth-century France, Lucie Dillon a daughter of French and British nobility known in France by her married name, Lucie de la Tour du Pin was the chronicler of her age.La Rochefoucauld called her "a cultural jewel." The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire favored her for his dinner companion in Paris. Napoleon requested she attend Josephine. Her friends included Talleyrand, Madame de Stal, Chateaubriand, Lafayette, and the Duke of Wellington, with whom she played as a child. She witnessed firsthand the demise of the French monarchy, the wave of Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and the precipitous rise and fall of Napoleon. She spent two years as an migr in the newly independent United States (on a farm in Albany) but was also a familiar of Regency London. A shrewd, determined woman in a turbulent age of men, Lucie de la Tour du Pin watched, listened, reflected and wrote it all down, mixing politics and court intrigue, social observation and the realities of everyday existence, to offer a fascinating chronicle of her era.In this compelling biography, Caroline Moorehead illuminates the extraordinary life and remarkable achievements of this strong, witty, elegant, opinionated, and dynamic woman who survived personal tragedy, including the loss of six children, and periods of extreme danger, exile, poverty, and illness. Meticulously researched, brilliantly written, and vastly entertaining, Moorehead's chronicle of Lucie's life is an incomparable social history of her times.

In the tradition of Mark Kurlansky's Cod and David Bodanis's E=MC2, The Battery is the first popular history of the technology that harnessed electricity and powered the greatest scientific and technological advances of our time. What began as a long-running dispute in biology, involving a dead frog's twitching leg, a scalpel, and a metal plate, would become an invention that transformed the history of the world: the battery. From Alessandro Volta's first copper-and-zinc model in 1800 to twenty-first-century technological breakthroughs, science journalist Henry Schlesinger traces the history of this essential power source and demonstrates its impact on our lives.Volta's first battery not only settled the frog's leg question, it also unleashed a field of scientific research that led to the discovery of new elements and new inventions, from Samuel Morse's telegraph to Alexander Graham Bell's telephone to Thomas Edison's incandescent lightbulb. And recent advances like nanotechnology are poised to create a new generation of paradigm-shifting energy sources.Schlesinger introduces the charlatans and geniuses, paupers and magnates, attracted to the power of the battery, including Michael Faraday, Guglielmo Marconi, Gaylord Wilshire, and Hugo Gernsback, the publisher and would-be inventor who coined the term "science fiction." A kaleidoscopic tour of an ingenious invention that helped usher in the modern world, The Battery is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

A Sweeping, Dramatic History of the Americans Who Chose to Side with the British in the Revolution The American Revolution was not simply a battle between independence-minded colonists and the oppressive British. As Thomas B. Allen reminds us, it was also a savage and often deeply personal civil war, in which conflicting visions of America pitted neighbor against neighbor and Patriot against Tory on the battlefield, the village green, and even in church.In this outstanding and vital history, Allen tells the complete story of these other Americans, tracing their lives and experiences throughout the revolutionary period. New York City and Philadelphia were Tory strongholds through much of the war, and at times in the Carolinas and Georgia there were more trained and armed Tories than Redcoats. The Revolution also produced one of the greatest and least known migrations in Western history. More than 80,000 Tories left America, most of them relocating to Canada.John Adams once said that he feared there would never be a good history of the American Revolution because so many documents had left the country with the Tories. Based on documents in archives from Nova Scotia to London, Tories adds a fresh perspective to our knowledge of the Revolution and sheds an important new light on the little-known figures whose lives were forever changed when they remained faithful to their mother country.

After learning to play guitar at the age of ten, Shawn Colvin was determined to make a life in music. Diamond in the Rough recounts this passionate musician's coming-of-age, from the prairies of South Dakota to dark smoky bars in Austin, Texas, to the world stage at the Grammys. With the wit, lyricism, and empathy that have characterized Colvin's performances and inspired audiences worldwide, Diamond in the Rough looks back over a rich lifetime of highs and lows with stunning insight and candor. In its pages, we witness the inspiring story of a woman honing her artistry, finding her voice, and making herself whole.

The renowned #1 New York Times bestselling authors share their advice and expertise with parents and teens in this accessible, indispensable guide to surviving adolescence.Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish transformed parenting with their breakthrough, bestselling books Siblings Without Rivalry and How to Talk So Kids Will Listen; Listen So Kids Will Talk. Now, they return with this essential guide that tackles the tough issues teens and parents face today.Filled with straightforward advice and written in their trademark, down-to-earth style sure to appeal to both parents and teens, this all-new volume offers both innovative, easy-to-implement suggestions and proven techniques to build the foundation for lasting relationships. From curfews and cliques to sex and drugs, it gives parents the tools to help their children safely navigate the often stormy years of adolescence.