Let's be honest. No woman really wants to be alone for the rest of her life. But does being alone mean you're doomed to be miserable foreverDefinitely not! And does being single have to equal lonelyNo way! You can have the best time of your life when you're single, but you wouldn't know that from our relationship obsessed society, where celebrity magazines devote the majority of their content to who's dating whom and the wedding industry is a $100-billion business. Yet more than a third of marriages end in divorce, and countless other couples languish in unions that shouldn't have happened in the first place.Don't become a statistic love yourself and never settle!Jen Schefft knows that better than almost anyone. In 2003, she got engaged in front of millions of people on television's The Bachelor, only to see it end nine months later when the relationship just wasn't right anymore. A year later, she turned down an engagement on The Bachelorette, and the backlash was relentless. She was labeled a "spinster" by a celebrity magazine, and a noted national talk-show host remarked that she would be "a bachelorette for the rest of her life."This is a terrible message to send to the millions of sensational single women out there, and in Better Single Than Sorry Schefft makes it her mission to let women know that it's better to be single than to be in a relationship that doesn't make you happy. With testimonials from women of all ages single, married, in committed relationships, with children (even single moms) and without this book tells you how to let go of your fear of being alone and how to love yourself and never settle for a relationship that is anything less than you deserve.Written in a conversational style, as if talking with your best friend, Schefft helps you navigate the pressures of a culture that places an unhealthy importance on being in a relationship and shows you how to find happiness in work, home, and the simple pleasures of everyday life. Above all, she shows you how it's far, far better to be single than sorry. Being single is a time to have fun, learn new things, grow, and blossom not a time to feel desperate or depressed, so cherish it!

The moving, gripping, and tell–all autobiography of Traci Elizabeth Lords, a former child porn queen, electronica maven, and cult movie and TV star. At 14, Nora Kuzma ran away from home and ended up on the dirty streets of Hollywood. She fell in with a fast crowd, and her dreams of modelling soon landed her a spectacular centrefold in Penthouse Magazine, where at 15 she became internationally known as TRACI LORDS. From there she appeared in numerous adult films and magazines, denying her past and battling a deep addiction to cocaine and men. Three years later she got out. This is her memoir–a tale of loss, redemption, and ultimate survival as Traci Elizabeth Lords takes you into her secretive past, faces her demons, and shares her extraordinary journey of personal growth.

Red-hot advice from the redhead who doesn't pull any punches Mother, wife, and fan favorite Caroline Manzo has been through it all as one of the original breakout stars of Bravo's The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The explosive and addicting reality series has seen some of the craziest moments in Real Housewives history, but Caroline has managed to set herself apart as the levelheaded, fiercely loyal, and down-to-earth member of the cast. Now Caroline, who is known for her no-nonsense advice, "tells you something" about what it really takes to juggle three kids and a husband (and still maintain your sanity), all while living in the spotlight. Her wisdom on family, life, and love, and her shockingly honest confessions about beauty, body image, and even plastic surgery, resonate with women of every generation. Equal parts funny, sincere, and revealing, Caroline exposes the sweeter, more reflective side of herself that fans of the show might not always see. Filled with personal stories, family photos, and Caroline's characteristic humor, Let Me Tell You Something gives fans and readers an all-access, behind-the-scenes pass into the life of this real New Jersey housewife and her family, where honest advice and practical life lessons are served up as only Caroline can.

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 year is 1989 and Mark Doty's life has reached a state of enviable equilibrium. His reputation as a poet of formidable talent is growing, he enjoys his work as a college professor and, perhaps most importantly, he is deeply in love with his partner of many years, Wally Roberts. The harmonious existence these two men share is shattered, however, when they learn that Wally has tested positive for the HIV virus. From diagnosis to the initial signs of deterioration to the heartbreaking hour when Wally is released from his body's ruined vessel, Heaven's Coastis an intimate chronicle of love, its hardships, and its innumerable gifts. We witness Doty's passage through the deepest phase of grief -- letting his lover go while keeping him firmly alive in memory and heart -- and, eventually beyond, to the slow reawakening of the possibilities of pleasure. Part memoir, part journal, part elegy for a life of rare communication and beauty, Heaven's Coast evinces the same stunning honesty, resplendent de*ive power and rapt attention to the physical landscape that has won Doty's poetry such attention and acclaim.

Magic or spycraftIn 1953, against the backdrop of the Cold War, the CIA initiated a top-secret program, code-named MKULTRA, to counter Soviet mind-control and interrogation techniques. Realizing that clandestine officers might need to covertly deploy newly developed pills, potions, and powders against the adversary, the CIA hired America's most famous magician, John Mulholland, to write two manuals on sleight of hand and undercover communication techniques. In 1973, virtually all documents related to MKULTRA were destroyed. Mulholland's manuals were thought to be among them until a single surviving copy of each, complete with illustrations, was recently discovered in the agency's archives.The manuals reprinted in this work represent the only known complete copy of Mulholland's instructions for CIA officers on the magician's art of deception and secret communications.

The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, "continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal" (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness and to her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott," with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, "Give me chastity, Lord but not yet!" has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up as only Mary Karr can tell it.

When Duane Elgin's classic bestseller, Voluntary Simplicity, was published in 1981, it transformed the lives of thousands and was hailed as the "bible" of the simplicity movement by the Wall Street Journal. Now, for anyone seeking to navigate today's profoundly changing world, Promise Ahead is the powerful sequel to a road map for securing a promising future.

When Katherine Sharpe arrived at her college health center with an age-old complaint, a bad case of homesickness, she received a thoroughly modern response: a twenty-minute appointment and a pre*ion for Zoloft a drug she would take for the next ten years. This outcome, once unlikely, is now alarmingly common. Twenty-five years after Prozac entered the marketplace, 10 percent of Americans over the age of six use an SSRI antidepressant.In Coming of Age on Zoloft, Sharpe blends deeply personal writing, thoughtful interviews, and historical context to achieve an unprecedented portrait of the antidepressant generation. She explores questions of identity that arise for people who start medication before they have an adult sense of self. She asks why some individuals find a diagnosis of depression reassuring, while others are threatened by it. She presents, in young people's own words, their intimate and complicated relationships with their medication. And she weighs the cultural implications of America's biomedical approach to moods.

By the tender of age of five, Bernie Mac had found his calling:making others laugh. Now this amazing comedian delves deep inside to share the poignant story of his childhood and the people who shaped him into the strong, self-reliant man and ruthlessly funny comedian he is today.When Bernie was just sixteen, he lost his mother to cancer.A tough but loving teacher, she showered the unwilling boy with life lessons and "Mac-isms" that would later carry him through many hardships and give him strength during his slow rise to stardom. Maybe You Never Cry Again recounts this ascent in hilarious detail, from eight-year-old Bernie's stand-up comedy performance at a church dinner to open mike nights in Chicago, the jobs he juggled to make ends meet and eventually, his success in entertaining huge audiences on stage, in film, and on television.Maybe You Never Cry Again is a powerful testamentto how a mother's love makes everything possible.

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.

For two hundred years, scholars have been analyzing one of the most important books ever written the Bible and overturning much of what we once thought we knew. Everyday Christians, however, are not privy to this deeper conversation. It is for these people that renowned bishop and author John Shelby Spong presents Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, a book designed to take readers into the contemporary academic debate about the Bible.A definitive voice for progressive Christianity, Spong frees readers from a literal view of the Bible. He opens the possibility that some of the characters in the New Testament are imaginary composites or even literary creations such as Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus; Judas Iscariot; Nicodemus; the Samaritan woman by the well; and Lazarus who was raised from the dead. He presents the Bible as an ever-changing and always growing story. He demonstrates that it is possible to be both a deeply committed Christian and an informed twenty-first-century citizen.In this thorough, substantive guide, Spong explores the origin and essential meaning of each of the individual books in the Bible, examining the background, the context, the level of authenticity and even the trustworthiness of the messages found there. He explains why these particular books, written between two and three thousand years ago, came to be regarded as authoritative and preserved as sacred; he traces the pathway that biblical religion has traveled as it evolved through the centuries, and he shows how people have misused many of these texts in the service of their prejudices.Reaching far beyond the familiar Sunday-school stories that have provided the content of most people’s biblical knowledge, Spong’s journey into the heart of the Bible is his attempt to call his readers into their own journeys into the mystery of God. One does not,” he asserts, have to twist one’s brain into a first-century pretzel in order to take the Bible seriously in this increasingly non-religious world.”

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...

In the same inimitable, uncensored, and hilarious style that has made him one of the most popular voices on satellite radio, Jason Ellis unleashes his no-holds-barred words of advice on diet and exercise, cultivating your signature look, partying, getting laid, maintaining a relationship and more! Maybe like Jason Ellis you want to have sex with multiple partners and then talk about it on the radio while wearing cheetah pants . . .Or maybe you have some goals of your own. Whatever the case may be, Jason believes it's all about getting off your ass and maximizing the opportunities that life has to offer. It's about remembering that you are alive, right now, and that won't always be the case. So do something. Anything. Enjoy the ride. Go outside and get naked.Jason can tell you how to handle every situation life throws at you and play it like a champ: how to look, how to act, how to pick up a stripper you name it.But that's just for starters. Jason believes that to get what you really want out of life, you have to have confidence. And true confidence is something you have to earn, by deciding what you want from life and then pursuing your passion until you make your dreams a reality.This book will show you how to develop the positive attitude that will allow you to truly make things happen.

What happens when German spies collaborate to unleash a campaign of terror upon America at the start of World War I?In the summer of 1914, New York Police Department captain Tom Tunney is preoccupied by Manhattan's raging gang rivalries and has little idea that, halfway around the world, a much more ominous threat to the city is brewing. As Germany teeters on the brink of war, its ambassador to the United States is given instructions to find and finance a team of undercover saboteurs who can bring America to its knees before it has a chance to enter the conflict on the side of the Allies.At the page-turning pace of a spy thriller, Dark Invasion tells the remarkable true story of Tunney and his pivotal role in discovering, and delivering to justice, a ruthless ring of German terrorists determined to annihilate the United States. Overwhelmed and undermatched, Tunney's small squad of cops was the David to Germany's Goliath, the operatives of which included military officers, a germ warfare expert, a gifted Harvard professor, a bomb technician, and a document forger. As explosions leveled munitions plants and destroyed cargo ships, particularly in and around New York City, pan- icked officials talked about rogue activists and anarchists but it was Tunney who suspected that these incidents were part of something bigger and became determined to bring down the culprits.Through meticulous research, Blum deftly reconstructs an enthralling, vividly detailed saga of subterfuge and bravery. Enhanced by more than fifty images sourced from global archives, his gritty, energetic narrative follows the German spies with Tunney hot on their heels from the streets, harbors, and warehouses of New York City to the genteel quads of Harvard, the grand estates of industry tycoons, and the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The New York Police Department's breathtaking efforts to unravel the extent of the German plot and close in on its perpetrators are revealed in this riveting account of America's first encounter with a national security threat unlike any other the threat of terrorism that is more relevant now than ever.

Jim Bishop's trademark suspenseful, hour-by-hour storytelling style drives this account of an unforgettable day in American history. Culled from interviews with more than three hundred individuals, his retelling tracks all the major and minor characters of that day JFK, Oswald, Ruby, LBJ, Jackie, and others illuminating a human drama that many readers believe they know well. At once moving and terrifying, and filled with vivid detail, it delivers the haunting feeling of being there as the day's events unfolded in both Dallas and Washington.As gripping as fiction but with a journalist's exacting detail, The Day Kennedy Was Shot captures the action, mystery, and drama that unfolded on November 22, 1963.

Welcome to the world of Martin "Buzzy" Schwartz, Champion Trader--the man whose nerves of steel and killer instinct in the canyons of Wall Street earned him the well-deserved name "Pit Bull." This is the true story of how Schwartz became the best of the best, of the people and places he discovered along the way and of the trader's tricks and techniques he used to make his millions.

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.