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How to Be a Grown Up
How to Be a Grown Up
Kaiser, Stacy
¥88.56
Are you pleased with the progress you've made so far in achieving your hopes and dreamsAre you excited about what's coming next in your lifeOr do you need a complete overhaul?In How to Be a Grown Up, renowned psychotherapist Stacy Kaiser demonstrates the life-changing benefits of embracing the concept of the "fully loaded grown up." After counseling thousands of patients, she has identified ten critical areas that determine success, happiness, and fulfillment from conscientious money management to developing strong coping skills to building the right kind of friendships and intimate partnerships.How to Be a Grown Up begins with "The Quiz," the first step to empowering you by helping you become an expert on your own life, exploring what you really want and need in every area of life. In chapters packed full of tips, tools, and exercises, Stacy takes you on a journey of self-discovery in which you evaluate your individual strengths and weaknesses as well as identify self-sabotaging traits and learn how to change them once and for all. Had trouble keeping your cool the last time you talked to your momRead up on the secrets of dynamic communicators. Reevaluating your circle of friendsDiscover the six types of grown-up friendships and appreciate your relationships for what they are. Stuck on a frustrating rung of the corporate ladderLearn the traits that every employer loves and how to master them yourself.Fully loaded grown ups are fully empowered and in charge of their own lives. They are able to initiate change instead of just reacting to events, bounce back from setbacks and disappointments, and enjoy more satisfying relationships with everyone, including themselves. Most important, fully loaded grown ups enjoy true freedom not the kind envisioned as a child, meaning eating ice cream for dinner, but absolute confidence in their ability to live their own best life.With her trademark mix of warmth and toughness, Stacy motivates readers to rally their strengths, let go of childish, outgrown attachments, and arrive at a peaceful balance between freedom and responsibility. Whether you feel you've lost control of your life or you just need a tune-up in an area or two, How to Be a Grown Up is a wise and witty life guide for the twenty-first century.
The Invitation
The Invitation
Oriah
¥88.56
Shared by word of mouth, e-mailed from reader to reader, recited over the radio, and read aloud at thousands of retreats and conferences, "The Invitation" has changed the lives of people everywhere. In this bestselling book, Oriah expands on the wisdom found within her beloved prose poem, which presents a powerful challenge to all who long to live an authentic life.In a world of endless small talk, constant traffic jams, and overburdened schedules, "The Invitation" opens the door to a new way of life -- a way of intimacy, honesty, and peace with ourselves, others, and the world around us. Oriah invites us to embrace the varieties of human experience, from desire and commitment to sorrow and betrayal, and to open ourselves to all that is possible. The Invitation is an invaluable guide to overcoming the obstacles that stand in our way and to discovering the true beauty that life has to offer. Accept the invitation and open yourself to a more meaningful life.
God According to God
God According to God
Schroeder, Gerald
¥88.56
In this groundbreaking exploration, a biblical scholar and M.I.T.-trained physicist combines decades of research to change the debate between religion and science, presenting a new paradigm of how to understand God.Gerald Schroeder has spent his career revealing the hand of God in the intricate discoveries of physics. Now, for the first time, he turns his attention to this force, examining both the Bible and the physical world to discover the true nature of God God according to God. Schroeder argues that we have ignored those traits of God we find unappealing, replacing them with our personal desire for the all-knowing, all-loving, never-changing deity that so many worship today. This leads to the age-old problem: How can there be such a God when the world is filled with tragedyYet Schroeder reveals that this troubling juxtaposition is really smoke and mirrors. The God revealed in the Bible is 100 percent compatible with the world as we know it today. It is our misconception of God that causes the disparity. In fact, the concept of God that atheists rail against and that believers defend is inaccurate. In God According to God, Schroeder presents a compelling case for the true God, a dynamic God who is still learning how to relate to creation. The key to God's action in the world, according to Schroeder, can be found in a well-known verse in Exodus that is typically translated "I am that which I am." Schroeder's correction that it should be translated "I will be that which I will be" reveals a God that changes to fit the ever-changing world. This opens our eyes to other characteristics of God that we have long overlooked despite their being present in some of the most popular stories in the Bible a God who regrets (the flood of Noah), a God who wants us to argue with Him (Jacob wrestling with God in the desert), and thus a God who changes His mind (Moses convinces God to spare the Israelite people), and a God who allowed nature, and the creation itself, from the very start, to rebel (Adam's and Eve's betrayal in Eden).With riveting chapters on the origins of life, a scientist's view of creation, and the unique place of our planet in the galaxy, God According to God offers a radical paradigm shift that will forever change how we understand God.
A Spiritual Formation Workbook -
A Spiritual Formation Workbook -
Smith, James Bryan
¥88.56
This beginning workbook for Spiritual Formation Groups features guidelines for starting a group, study plans for the first nine sessions, and a questionnaire that helps map the way ahead. Based upon six major dimensions of the spiritual life found in the life of Christ and Christian tradition: The Contemplative Tradition - The Holiness Tradition - The Charismatic Tradition - The Social Justice Tradition - The Evangelical Tradition - and The Incarnational Tradition, this workbook program provides all the necessary ingredients to start and maintain a Spiritual Formation Group. Successfully used by thousands of Spiritual Formation Group participants, A Spiritual Formation Workbook has been completely revised to correlate with Richard J. Foster's Streams of Living Water. Its new and updated exercises and teachings offer fresh perspectives on Christian faith and practice.Christian in perspective and ecumenical in breadth, RENOVAR? (from the Latin, meaning "to renew") is an effort committed to the renewal of the Church. Founded by bestselling writer Richard J. Foster, RENOVAR? provides individual churches with a balanced, practical, effective small-group strategy for spiritual growth.
37 Seconds
37 Seconds
Arnold, Stephanie
¥88.56
Pregnant with her second child, Stephanie Arnold began receiving mysterious but strong premonitions that she would die during the delivery. Distressed, Stephanie did everything she could to inform the medical team and her family about what she knew was coming. No one believed her, but Stephanie knew they were wrong. When she gave birth to her son, Stephanie flatlined and died on the operating table for 37 seconds, during which time she had a spiritual experience she would never forget.After reading what Stephanie discovered in her search to make sense of what happened to her, you will never look at life, death, and the afterlife the same way again.
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
Castor, Helen
¥88.56
The acclaimed historian Helen Castor bestselling author and BBC broadcaster of She-Wolves, the story of England's queens before Elizabeth I returns with the incredible story of Joan of Arc, as only a biographer of Castor's enormous talents can tell it.Helen Castor brings us afresh a gripping life of Joan of Arc. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing young woman, a roaring girl fighting the English and taking sides in a bloody civil war that was tearing apart fifteenth-century France.Here is a portrait of a nineteen-year-old peasant who hears voices from God; a teenager transformed into a warrior, leading an army to victory in an age that believed women should not fight. And it is also the story behind the myth we all know, a myth that began to take hold at her trial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the savior of France, a young woman burned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who, five hundred years later, would be declared a saint.Joan and her world are brought vividly to life in this startling new take on the medieval world.Castor brings us to the heart of the action, to a woman and a country in turmoil, a world where no one, not Joan herself or the people around her princes, bishops, soldiers, or peasants knew what would happen next.Adding complexity, depth, and fresh insight into Joan's life, showing her confronting the challenges of faith and doubt in a superstitious age, Castor's Joan of Arc is a rich history and biography that allows us to better understand this remarkable woman and her world.
The Practice of Saying No
The Practice of Saying No
Taylor, Barbara Brown
¥88.56
In The Practice of Saying No, beloved author and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor reflects on the meaning of keeping the Sabbath: of saying no to work and doing, but instead celebrating stopping, resting on the porch, and taking the time to recognize our interconnectedness. The Practice of Saying No will appeal to anyone seeking more meaning and spirituality in their everyday lives. Barbara Brown Taylor, acclaimed author of Leaving Church and An Altar in the World (from which this eSelect is taken), writes with the honesty of Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) and the spiritual depth of Anne Lamott (Grace, Eventually) and reveals how to encounter the sacred as a natural part of everyday life.
A Thousand Times More Fair
A Thousand Times More Fair
Yoshino, Kenji
¥88.56
A provocative exploration of justice in our time through fresh readings of Shakespeare's greatest plays Celebrated legal scholar Kenji Yoshino's first book, Covering, was acclaimed from the New York Times Book Review to O, The Oprah Magazine to the American Lawyer for its elegant prose, its good humor, and its brilliant insights into civil rights and discrimination law. Now, in A Thousand Times More Fair, Yoshino turns his attention to the broad question of what makes a fair and just society, and he delves deep into a surprising source to answer it: Shakespeare's greatest plays.An enormously creative and provocative book, A Thousand Times More Fair addresses fundamental questions we ask about our world today: Why is the rule of law better than revengeHow much mercy should we show a wrongdoerWhat does it mean to "prove" guilt or innocenceAs Yoshino argues, a searching examination of Shakespeare's plays and the many advocates, judges, criminals, and vigilantes who populate them can elucidate some of the most troubling issues in contemporary life.With a great ear for Shakespeare and an eye trained steadily on current affairs, Yoshino considers how competing models of judging presented in Measure for Measure resurfaced around the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor; how the revenge cycle of Titus Andronicus illuminates the "war on terror" and our military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq; how the white handkerchief in Othello and the black glove in the O. J. Simpson trial reflect forms of proof that overwhelm all other evidence; and how the spectacle of an omnipotent ruler voluntarily surrendering power in The Tempest, as Cincinnatus did before him and George Washington did after him, informs regime change in our own time.A Thousand Times More Fair is an altogether original book about Shakespeare and the law, and an ideal starting point to explore the nature of a just society and our own.
The Reckoning
The Reckoning
Bishop, Patrick
¥88.56
Renowned military historian Patrick Bishop revisits the death of notorious Zionist leader Avraham Stern head of the infamous Stern Gang challenging the prevailing account of his demise.The charismatic mastermind of a series of high-profile terrorist attacks with the goal of attaining Jewish independence and statehood, Avraham Stern was driven by his belief that he was the Jewish liberator of British Palestine. By early 1942 he was the most wanted man in Palestine, forced to take refuge in an attic in Tel Aviv to evade Assistant Superintendent Geoffrey Morton, who was assigned to track him down.Stern's capture and death have been debated and endlessly contested over the years. The official British report stated that Stern was attempting to escape, and Morton had reason to believe that he had explosives. However, witnesses claimed that it was a cold-blooded murder that precipitated a cult of martyrdom, precluding any possibility of a detente among the British, the Arabs, and the Jews, and inspiring his followers for many years.The Reckoning chronicles Patrick Bishop's fascinating quest to uncover the truth about Stern's ignominious death. Bishop gained access to Morton's private archive and interviews with witnesses, and relates a dramatic story that resonates to this very day in one of the world's most conflicted regions.Bishop's gripping narrative describes without bias what actually transpired in the safe house where Stern was discovered. He relates Stern's capture in the context of the complex battle to expel the British from Palestine and secure Jewish independence. These men appear to have nothing in common, yet Bishop succeeds in depicting critical traits that they did share dedication to their causes and an unflinching determination to achieve their goals at all costs. Bishop makes a strong case for the impact of Stern's shooting in the remaining years of British rule through meticulous research and a profound understanding of the forces at play during this historic conflagration.
Not Quite What I Was Planning
Not Quite What I Was Planning
Smith, Larry
¥88.56
Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive, Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanity six words at a time.One Life. Six Words. What's Yours?When Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving.From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-sized pieces. From authors Jonathan Lethem and Richard Ford to comedians Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris, to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell.
Ghosts of 42nd Street
Ghosts of 42nd Street
Bianco, Anthony
¥88.56
Imagine shuffling down Broadway through the hustle and bustle right into the nonstop, neon heart of New York City: 42nd Street.Once a quiet neighborhood of brownstones and churches, the area wastransformed in the early 1900s into an entertainment hub unlike any in theworld. No place has ever evoked the glamour and romantic possibility of bigcity nightlife as vividly as did 42nd Street. It was the dazzle of "naughty, bawdy, gaudy" 42nd Street that put Times Square on the map and turned the Broadway theater district into the Great White Way. Ghosts of 42nd Street stirs your imagination as it takes you on a historical journey of this glamorized strip still known today as the Crossroads of the World. From the bold innovations of Oscar Hammerstein and Florenz Ziegfeld through the porn-laden 1960s and 1970s to the present-day "Disneyfication" of New York's bright lights district, Ghosts of 42nd Street is as fascinating as a tabloid frozen in time.
The Heart Revolution
The Heart Revolution
McCully, Kilmer
¥88.56
A safe, effective, and revolutionary program for lowering homocysteine levels and cutting your risk of heart disease In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Kilmer S. McCully explains what is really behind the epidemic of heart disease. For many years, clogged arteries have been inaccurately viewed as the cause, rather than a symptom, of heart disease. Now, McCully shows you how to cut your risk of heart disease by controlling the real culprit, homocysteine. Considered one of the most significant medical breakthroughs in recent years, McCully's findings have been validated by numerous large-scale studies. The Heart Revolution: Challenges the long-held assumption that lowering cholesterol is the key to preventing heart disease Explains how eating vitamin B-rich food can control homocysteine levels Lays out a plan with menus for putting more B vitamins in our diet Discusses how food processing and additives compromise our health Explains how costly cholesterol-lowering medicines can actually harm our health Eat Your Way to a Healthy Heart Pork Chops with Potatoes and Onions, Veal with Wine and Mushrooms, Guacamole, Omelettes. This is not your typical diet program. Dr. McCully offers real food choices with fresh ingredients available just about everywhere. The focus is on delicious foods that will leave you satisfied. The purpose is to make sure you're getting enough of the vitamins needed to prevent heart disease B6, B12, and folic acid, as well as essential, phytochemicals, fat-soluble vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and essential oils. It's easy to follow this plan as it relies on foods you want to eat with little preparation time and tons of variety.
Rebirth of a Nation
Rebirth of a Nation
Lears, Jackson
¥88.56
In the half-century between the Civil War and World War I, widespread yearning for a new beginning permeated American public life. Dreams of spiritual, moral, and physical rebirth formed the foundation for the modern United States, inspiring its leaders with imperial ambition. Theodore Roosevelt's desire to recapture frontier vigor led him to promote U.S. interests throughout Latin America. Woodrow Wilson's vision of a reborn international order drew him into a war to end war. Andrew Carnegie's embrace of philanthropy coincided with his creation of the world's first billion-dollar corporation, United States Steel. Presidents and entrepreneurs helped usher the nation into the modern era, but sometimes the consequences of their actions failed to match the grandeur of their hopes. Award-winning historian Jackson Lears richly chronicles this momentous period when America reunited and began to form the world power of the twentieth century. Lears vividly captures imperialists, Gilded Age mavericks, and vaudeville entertainers, and illuminates the roles played by a variety of seekers, male and female, from populist farmers to avant-garde artists and writers to progressive reformers. Some were motivated by their own visions of Christianity; all were swept up in longings for revitalization. In these years marked by wrenching social conflict and vigorous political debate, a modern America emerged and came to dominance on a world stage. Illuminating and authoritative, Rebirth of a Nation brilliantly weaves the remarkable story of this crucial epoch into a masterful work of history.
Going into the City
Going into the City
Christgau, Robert
¥88.56
One of our great essayists and music journalists, the Dean of American Rock Critics, leads a heady tour through his life and times in this atmospheric, visceral memoir both a love letter to a New York long past and a tribute to the transformative power of artLifelong New Yorker Robert Christgau has been writing about pop culture since he was twelve and getting paid for it since he was twenty-two, covering rock for Esquire in its heyday and personifying the music beat at The Village Voice for over three decades. Christgau listened to Alan Freed howl about rock and roll before Elvis, settled east of Manhattan's Avenue B forty years before it was cool, wit-nessed Monterey and Woodstock and Chicago 1968 and the first abortion speakout. He caught Coltrane in the East Village, Muddy Waters in Chicago, Otis Redding at the Apollo, the Dead in the Haight, Janis Joplin at the Fillmore, the Clash in Leeds, Grandmaster Flash in Times Square, and every punk band you can think of at CBGB.Christgau chronicled many of the key cultural shifts of the last half century and revolutionized the cultural status of the music critic in the process. Going into the City is a look back at the upbringing that grounded him, the history that transformed him, and the music, books, and films that showed him the way. Like Alfred Kazin's A Walker in the City, E. B. White's Here Is New York, Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel, and Patti Smith's Just Kids, it is a loving portrait of a lost New York. It's an homage to the city of Christgau's youth from Queens to the Lower East Side a city that exists mostly in memory today. And it's a love story about the Greenwich Village girl who roamed this realm of possibility with him.
In a Dark Wood
In a Dark Wood
Luzzi, Joseph
¥88.56
When you lose your whole world in a moment, where do you turn?On a cold November morning, Joseph Luzzi, a Dante scholar and professor at Bard College, found himself racing to the hospital his wife, Katherine, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, had been in a horrible car accident. In one terrible instant, Luzzi became both a widower and a first-time father. In the aftermath of unthinkable tragedy, Luzzi relied on the support of his Italian immigrant family, returning to his childhood home to grieve and care for his infant daughter. But it wasn't until he turned to The Divine Comedy a poem he had devoted his life to studying and teaching that he learned how to resurrect his life. Following the same structure as Dante's epic poem, Luzzi is shepherded out of his own "dark wood," passing through the grief-stricken Inferno, the Purgatory of healing, and ultimately stepping into the Paradise of rediscovered love. Beautifully written, poignant, insightful, and unflinchingly honest, In a Dark Wood is a hybrid of heartrending memoir and a meditation on the power of great art to give us strength in our darkest moments. Drawing us into hell and back, it is Dante's journey, Joseph Luzzi's, and our very own.
Pain, Parties, Work
Pain, Parties, Work
Winder, Elizabeth
¥88.56
I dreamed of New York, I am going there.On May 31, 1953, twenty-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at the intellectual fashion magazine Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next twenty-six days, the bright, blond New England collegian lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended Balanchine ballets, watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She typed rejection letters to writers from The New Yorker and ate an entire bowl of caviar at an advertising luncheon. She stalked Dylan Thomas and fought off an aggressive diamond-wielding delegate from the United Nations. She took hot baths, had her hair done, and discovered her signature drink (vodka, no ice). Young, beautiful, and on the cusp of an advantageous career, she was supposed to be having the time of her life.Drawing on in-depth interviews with fellow guest editors whose memories infuse these pages, Elizabeth Winder reveals how these twenty-six days indelibly altered how Plath saw herself, her mother, her friendships, and her romantic relationships, and how this period shaped her emerging identity as a woman and as a writer. Pain, Parties, Work the three words Plath used to describe that time shows how Manhattan's alien atmosphere unleashed an anxiety that would stay with her for the rest of her all-too-short life.Thoughtful and illuminating, this captivating portrait invites us to see Sylvia Plath before The Bell Jar, before she became an icon a young woman with everything to live for.
How to Work a Room, 25th Anniversary Edition
How to Work a Room, 25th Anniversary Edition
RoAne, Susan
¥88.56
The classic bestseller on socializing now fully updated for social interactions in a digital ageHow to Work a Room is the classic bestselling book on improving communication and socializing skills, and using them to create and leverage connections. This Silver Anniversary Edition is fully revised and updated to include the role of technology and social media in networking, as well as Susan RoAne's proven tips for using digital strategies to your advantage plus practical hints for starting conversations and strengthening rapport with strangers. How to Work a Room: The 25th Anniversary Edition is a vital tool for business professionals, job seekers and career changers of all ages.
Clever Girl
Clever Girl
Kessler, Lauren
¥88.56
Communists vilified her as a raging neurotic. Leftists dismissed her as a confused idealist. Her family pitied her as an exploited lover. Some said she was a traitor, a stooge, a mercenary and a grandstander. To others she was a true American heroine fearless, principled, bold and resolute. Congressional committees loved her. The FBI hailed her as an avenging angel. The Catholics embraced her. But the fact is, more than half a century after she captured the headlines as the "Red Spy Queen," Elizabeth Bentley remains a mystery.New England-born, conservatively raised, and Vassar-educated, Bentley was groomed for a quiet life, a small life, which she explored briefly in the 1920s as a teacher, instructing well-heeled young women on the beauty of Romance languages at an east coast boarding school. But in her mid-twenties, she rejected both past and future and set herself on an entirely new course. In the 1930s she embraced communism and fell in love with an undercover KGB agent who initiated her into the world of espionage. By the time America plunged into WWII, Elizabeth Bentley was directing the operations of the two largest spy rings in America. Eventually, she had eighty people in her secret apparatus, half of them employees of the federal government. Her sources were everywhere: in the departments of Treasury and Commerce, in New Deal agencies, in the top-secret OSS (the precursor to the CIA), on Congressional committees, even in the Oval Office.When she defected in 1945 and told her story first to the FBI and then at a series of public hearings and trials she was catapulted to tabloid fame as the "Red Spy Queen," ushering in, almost single-handedly, the McCarthy Era. She was the government’s star witness, the FBI’s most important informer, and the darling of the Catholic anti-Communist movement. Her disclosures and accusations put a halt to Russian spying for years and helped to set the tone of American postwar political life.But who was sheA smart, independent woman who made her choices freely, right and wrong, and had the strength of character to see them throughOr was she used and manipulated by othersClever Girl is the definitive biography of a conflicted American woman and her controversial legacy. Set against the backdrop of the political drama that defined mid-twentieth century America, it explores the spy case whose explosive domestic and foreign policy repercussions have been debated for decades but not fully revealed until now.
Monkey Girl
Monkey Girl
Humes, Edward
¥88.56
What should we teach our children about where we come fromIs evolution a lie or good scienceIs it incompatible with faithHave scientists really detected evidence of a creator in natureFrom bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Humes comes a dramatic story of faith, science, and courage unlike any since the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Monkey Girl takes you behind the scenes of the recent war on evolution in Dover, Pennsylvania, when the town's school board decision to confront the controversy head-on thrust its students, then the entire community, onto the front lines of America's culture wars. Told from the perspectives of all sides of the battle, it is a riveting true story about an epic court case on the teaching of "intelligent design," and what happens when science and religion collide.
William Morrow
William Morrow
Retzlaff, Mandy
¥88.56
There is little in this world that a family cannot endure, if endure they must. For we all have it within us to lose everything, absolutely everything, and still find strength in the most simple, beautiful things.Pat and Mandy Retzlaff lived a hard but satisfying farming life in Zimbabwe. Working all hours of the day on their sprawling ranch and raising three boisterous children, they savored the beauty of the veld and the diverse wildlife that grazed the meadows outside their dining room window. After their children, the couple's true pride and joy were their horses. But in early 2001, the Retzlaffs' lives were thrown into turmoil when armed members of President Robert Mugabe's War Veterans' Association began invading the farmlands owned by white Zimbabweans and violently reclaiming the land. Under the threat of death, the family was forced to flee, leaving behind a lifetime's possessions and becoming exiles in the only country they had ever called home. As other families across the country fled, they left behind not only their homes but dozens of horses. Devoted animal lovers, Pat and Mandy now essentially homeless themselves vowed to save these horses: Shere Khan, the queen of the herd; Tequila, the escape artist forever breaking free and trying to walk back to his original home; Grey, the silver gelding and leader; Princess, the temperamental mare; and the numerous others they rescued along the way. One Hundred and Four Horses is a love story and an epic tale of survival and unbreakable bonds those that hold us to land and family, but also those between man and the most majestic of animals, the horse.
The Chain
The Chain
Genoways, Ted
¥88.56
A harrowing investigation of the tortuous path our food products take—from slaughter to Spam On the production line in American packing-houses, there is one cardinal rule: the chain never slows. Under pressure to increase supply, the supervisors of meat-processing plants have routinely accelerated the pace of conveyors, leading to inhumane conditions, increased accidents, and food of questionable, often dangerous quality. In The Chain, acclaimed journalist Ted Genoways uses the story of Hormel Foods and its most famous product, Spam—a recession-era staple—to probe the state of the meatpacking industry, including the expansion of agribusiness and the effects of immigrant labor on Middle America. Interviewing scores of line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, and local politicians and activists, Genoways reveals an industry pushed to its breaking point. Along the way, he exposes alarming new trends: sick or permanently disabled workers, abused animals, water and soil pollution, and mounting conflict between small towns and immigrant labor. The narrative moves across the heartland—from Minnesota, to witness the cut-and-kill operation; to Iowa, to observe breeding and farrowing in massive hog barns; to Nebraska, to see the tense town hall meetings and broken windows in reaction to the arrival of Hispanic workers; and back to Minnesota, where political refugees from Burma give the workforce the power it needs to fight back. A searching exposé in the tradition of Upton Sinclair, Rachel Carson, and Eric Schlosser, The Chain is a mesmerizing story and an urgent warning about the hidden costs of the food we eat.