No one knew Led Zeppelin like Richard Cole. The band's tour manager for more than a decade, Cole was there when they burst onto the music scene, achieved cult status, cut platinum records, and transformed popular music. Second only to the Beatles in sales for years, Led Zeppelin was rock's premier group. But unlike the boys from Liverpool, the excitement of this band"s music was matched by the fever pitch of their antics on and off the stage....In hotel rooms and stadiums, in a customized private Boeing 707 jet and country estates, Richard Cole saw it all -- and here he tells it all in this close-up, down-and-dirty, no-holds-barred account that records the highs, the lows, and the occasional in-betweens. This revised edition brings fans up to date on the band members' lives and careers, which may be a little quieter now, but their songs remain the same.

Does your partner want to go out on Friday nights when you prefer to curl up at home with a movieDoes your neat-freak boyfriend always want to clean up your cluttered officeDoes your wife want to plan trips six months in advance while you're a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of personThe truth is, opposites attract. People who are different from each other in fundamental ways often catch each other's attention. We are attracted to the very qualities we wish we had ourselves. A shy person looks for a mate who is outgoing and gregarious to provide a social circle, and the outgoing person may need to be with someone who won't compete with him for attention. It seems like the perfect match that is, until those very differences that originally attracted us start to drive us crazy. But these differences don't have to drive couples apart. Renee Baron, a marriage and family therapist with more than twenty-five years of experience, uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to provide a practical program for learning to appreciate our differences, rather than fight over them. The MBTI is the most widely used personality indicator in the world. By discovering your innate personality preferences and those of your partner, you can stop having the same fights over and over again and start appreciating the gifts each of you offers to the relationship.

The engrossing, often scandalous saga of one of the wealthiest, longest-lasting, and most colorful family dynasties in the history of American commerce a cautionary tale about prosperity, profligacy, hubris, and the blessings and dark consequences of success.From countless bar signs, stadium scoreboards, magazine ads, TV commercials, and roadside billboards, the name Budweiser has been burned into the American consciousness as the "King of Beers." Over a span of more than a century, the company behind it, Anheuser-Busch, has attained legendary status. A jewel of the American Industrial Revolution, in the hands of its founders the sometimes reckless and always boisterous Busch family of St. Louis, Missouri it grew into one of the most fearsome marketing machines in modern times. In Bitter Brew, critically acclaimed journalist Knoedelseder paints a fascinating portrait of immense wealth and power accompanied by a barrelful of scandal, heartbreak, tragedy, and untimely death.This engrossing, vivid narrative captures the Busch saga through five generations. At the same time, it weaves a broader story of American progress and decline over the past 150 years. It's a cautionary tale of prosperity, hubris, and loss.

From actress Sanaa Lathan to Georgia State Supreme Court chief justice Leah Ward Sears, many African-American women attribute much of their success to having a positive father figure In Daughters of Men, author Rachel Vassel has compiled dozens of stunning photographs and compelling personal essays about African-American women and their fathers. Whether it's a father who mentors his daughter's artistic eye by taking her to cultural events or one who unwaveringly supports a risky career move, the fathers in this book each had his own unique and successful style of parenting. The first book to showcase the importance of the black father's impact on the accomplishments of his daughter, Daughters of Men provides an intimate look at black fatherhood and the many ways fathers have a lasting impact on their daughters' lives.

In the mid-1990s, two major Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, each launched their own broadcast television network with the hope of becoming the fifth major player in an industry long dominated by ABC, CBS, NBC, and, more recently, Fox. Despite the odds against them, the WB and UPN went on to alter the landscape of primetime television, only to then merge as the CW network in 2006 each a casualty of conflicting personalities, relentless competition, and a basic failure to anticipate the future of the entertainment business.Unfolding amid this backdrop of high-stakes business ventures, fanatical creative struggles, and corporate power plays, Season Finale traces the parallel stories of the WB and UPN from their prosperous beginnings to their precipitous demise. Following the big money, big egos, and big risks of network television, Susanne Daniels, a television executive with the WB for most of its life, and Cynthia Littleton, a longtime television reporter for Variety, expose the difficult reality of trying to launch not one but two traditional broadcast networks at the moment when cable television and the Internet were ending the dominance of network television.Through in-depth reportage and firsthand accounts, Daniels and Littleton expertly re-create the creative and business climate that gave birth to the WB and UPN, illustrating how the race to find suitable programming spawned a heated rivalry between the two but also created shows that became icons of American youth culture. Offering insider stories and never-before-published details about shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson's Creek, 7th Heaven, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, Felicity, Girlfriends, Everybody Hates Chris, and America's Next Top Model, Daniels and Littleton provide an exhaustive account of the two creative teams that ushered these groundbreaking programs into the hearts, minds, and living rooms of Americans across the country.But in spite of these successes, the WB and UPN unraveled, and here the authors elucidate the corporate miscalculations that led to their undoing, examining the management missteps and industry upheaval that brought about their rapid decline and the surprising teamwork that united them as the CW. The result is a cautionary and compelling entertainment saga that skillfully captures a precarious moment in television history, when the dramatic transformation of the broadcast networks signaled an inevitable shift for all pop culture.

1 corinthians 10:13, niv"No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."Amber Frey's life was full of blessings: an exciting new business, a beautiful home, and most of all, her infant daughter, Ayiana. But Amber had been through some unhappy relationships, and she longed for a true and loving partner. In November 2002, she went on a blind date with Scott Peterson. He was handsome, charming, thoughtful, and romantic. Best of all, he was single and ready to settle down . . . or so he said.Their connection was immediate. Over the next few weeks, Amber and Scott grew closer and closer. Scott won her over with his warmth, humor, and intelligence, and he even won the heart of little Ayiana. Before long, he began to speak of the beautiful future the three of them were destined to share as a family. Soon enough, however, Amber began to suspect that Scott Peterson might not be the man he claimed to be. On December 9, he broke down in tears and told her that he had been married, but had "lost" his wife. This was weeks before Laci Peterson, eight months pregnant at the time, was even reported missing. Scott Peterson hadn't lost her, but clearly he was planning to.Suddenly a relationship that seemed full of promise was turning into Amber's worst nightmare.Amber launched an investigation of her own. The moment she was able to confirm her worst suspicions, she contacted the Modesto Police Department, in northern California, and offered to do whatever she could to help. She began secretly taping her conversations with Scott, pressing him for information but never letting on that she had heard the news of Laci's disappearance. Those conversations became the basis for the prosecution's case against Scott Peterson for the murder of his wife and unborn child. Amber's whole world was turned upside down in the process. She lost her privacy, as every detail of her life was scrutinized by the media, who couldn't seem to get enough of this tragic, heart-wrenching story. But she soldiered on, looking deep inside herself and drawing strength from her faith. Witness is the chilling story of how a young woman became ensnared in Scott Peterson's web of lies, then risked everything to seek justice for Laci Peterson and her unborn child, Conner. It is also a story of forgiveness and faith, and of one woman's struggle to live with an open and honest heart.

With his career at a standstill and his golf game a shadow of its former mediocrity, TV writer and ESPN.com contributor Bob Smiley decided the time had come to turn to the one person who might be able to help: Tiger Woods. So, in January of 2008, Smiley set out to follow the game's greatest player from the gallery for every hole of an entire season and to absorb all that he could.Smiley traveled from the seaside cliffs of San Diego to the deserts of Dubai, through the hallowed gates of Augusta National, and on to arguably the greatest U.S. Open of all time back at Torrey Pines, where, in a legendary duel with charismatic journeyman Rocco Mediate, Woods won his fourteenth major on one leg.Smiley chronicles every dramatic and often hysterical moment of his journey with Tiger, including his off-course run-ins with Arabian sandstorms, ex-con ticket scalpers, and the motley assortment of strangers who became friends along the way.Told from the perspective of a true golf fan, Follow the Roar is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure through the most spectacular and inspiring season in Tiger Woods's celebrated career. In addition to the thrill of witnessing all 604 holes Woods played in '08, Smiley found in Tiger both inspiration and the gutsy embodiment of what it really means to be an athlete and a man.

Every general manager today all the way up to the CEO is expected by his or her stakeholders to achieve new breakthroughs in performance and fast. Those who don't make visible progress toward that goal within the first year or two will likely find themselves looking for another job. It is precisely because of this growing breakthrough imperative that managers today, whether in corporations or nonprofits, need to get off to a fast start. They don't have time for mistakes or for going back and redoing what they should have done right in the first place. But, despite the intensity of these pressures, despite the high expectations and short time frames, a number of CEOs and general managers turn in truly exceptional results. How do they meet and exceed the breakthrough imperativeTo answer this question, consultants and former managers Mark Gottfredson and Steve Schaubert interviewed more than forty CEOs from both industry and the nonprofit sector, conducted an intensive study of what successful managers do right and what some do wrong and drew on their own combined fifty-plus years of experience at Bain & Company, where their insights have consistently been found in the pages of the Harvard Business Review. Together they came up with the four straightforward principles deceptively simple yet remarkably powerful that everyone must follow to succeed at achieving breakthrough results: 1. Costs and prices always decline2. Competitive position determines options3. Customers and profit pools don't stand still4. Simplicity gets results Although seemingly simplistic, mastering these four laws means mastering the basics of great management a foundation on which to build the rest of one's management strategy. Whether you're managing a small work group or a multinational corporation, a single division or an entire nonprofit, The Breakthrough Imperative presents these core laws of business to help you determine where you are, just how far you can go, and how to get there with stellar results.

Through 150 striking color photographs, Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs charts the road to Barack Obama's nomination as the first African American to lead the presidential ticket of a major party. Announcing his campaign in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007, Obama stood on the grounds of the Old State Capitol, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous "House Divided" speech against slavery in 1858. During an eighteen-month campaign, from the snows of Iowa to the hunt for Democratic "superdelegates," this junior senator from Chicago confounded the party establishment and rewrote the playbook on modern presidential campaigning. This amazing collection of photographs captures the public and private moments of his journey, and offers a unique window into one of the great triumphs in American politics.

In 1692 Puritan Samuel Sewall sent twenty people to their deaths on trumped-up witchcraft charges. The nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts represent a low point of American history, made famous in works by Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne (himself a descendant of one of the judges), and Arthur Miller. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy except for a courageous act of contrition now commemorated in a mural that hangs beneath the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House picturing Sewall's public repentance. He was the only Salem witch judge to make amends.But, remarkably, the judge's story didn't end there. Once he realized his error, Sewall turned his attention to other pressing social issues. Struck by the injustice of the New England slave trade, a commerce in which his own relatives and neighbors were engaged, he authored "The Selling of Joseph," America's first antislavery tract. While his peers viewed Native Americans as savages, Sewall advocated for their essential rights and encouraged their education, even paying for several Indian youths to attend Harvard College. Finally, at a time when women were universally considered inferior to men, Sewall published an essay affirming the fundamental equality of the sexes. The text of that essay, composed at the deathbed of his daughter Hannah, is republished here for the first time.In Salem Witch Judge, acclaimed biographer Eve LaPlante, Sewall's great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, draws on family lore, her ancestor's personal diaries, and archival documents to open a window onto life in colonial America, painting a portrait of a man traditionally vilified, but who was in fact an innovator and forefather who came to represent the best of the American spirit.

In 2005 Uzodinma Iweala stunned readers and critics alike with Beasts of No Nation, his debut novel about child soldiers in West Africa. Now his return to Africa has produced Our Kind of People, a non-fiction account of the AIDS crisis every bit as startling and original. HIV/AIDS has been reported as one of the most destructive diseases in recent memory tearing apart communities and ostracizing the afflicted. But the emphasis placed on death, destruction, and despair hardly captures the many and varied effects of the epidemic, or the stories of the extraordinary people who live and die under its watch.Our Kind of People opens our minds to these stories, introducing a new set of voices and altering the way we speak and think about disease. Iweala embarks on a remarkable journey through his native Nigeria, meeting individuals and communities that are struggling daily to understand both the impact and meaning of HIV/AIDS. He speaks with people from all walks of life the ill and the healthy, doctors, nurses, truck drivers, sex workers, shopkeepers, students, parents, and children. Their testimonies are by turns uplifting, alarming, humorous, and surprising, and always unflinchingly candid. Integrating his own experiences with these voices, Iweala creates at once a deeply personal exploration of life, love, and connection in the face of disease, and an incisive critique of our existing ideas of health and happiness.Beautifully written and heartbreakingly honest, Our Kind of People goes behind the headlines of an unprecedented epidemic to show the real lives it affects, illuminating the scope of the crisis and a continent's valiant struggle.

Veuve Clicquot champagne epitomizes glamour, style, and luxury. In The Widow Clicquot, Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life for the first time the fascinating woman behind the iconic yellow label: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, who, after her husband's death, defied convention by assuming the reins of the fledgling wine business they had nurtured together. Steering the company through dizzying political and financial reversals, she became one of the world's first great businesswomen and one of the richest women of her time. As much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered woman, The Widow Clicquot is the captivating true story of a legend and a visionary.

What triggers fascination, and how do companies, people, and ideas put those triggers to useWhy are you captivated by some people but not by othersWhy do you recall some brands yet forget the restIn a distracted, overcrowded world, how do certain leaders, friends, and family members convince you to change your behaviorFascination: the most powerful way to influence decision making. It's more persuasive than marketing, advertising, or any other form of communication. And it all starts with seven universal triggers: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust. Fascination plays a role in every type of decision making, from the brands you choose to the songs you remember, from the person you marry to the employees you hire. And by activating the right triggers, you can make anything become fascinating.To explore and explain fascination's irresistible influence, Sally Hogshead looks beyond marketing, delving into behavioral and social studies, historical precedents, neurobiology and evolutionary anthropology, as well as conducting in-depth interviews and a national study of a thousand consumers, to emerge with deeply rooted patterns for why, and how, we become captivated.Hogshead reveals why the Salem witch trials began with the same fixations as those in Sex and the City. How Olympic athletes are subject to obsessions similar to those of fetishists. How a 1636 frenzy over Dutch tulip bulbs perfectly mirrors the 2006 real estate bubble. And why a billion-dollar "Just Say No" program actually increased drug use among teens, by activating the same "forbidden fruit" syndrome as a Victoria's Secret catalog.Whether you realize it or not, you're already using the seven triggers. The question is, are you using the right triggers, in the right way, to get your desired resultThis book will show you.

From the critically acclaimed author of Crazy '08 comes the thrilling true story of the most colorful and notorious law firm in American history. Scoundrels in Law offers an inside look at crime and punishment in the nineteenth century, and a whirlwind tour of the Gilded Age. Gangsters and con men. Spurned mistresses and wandering husbands. Strippers and Broadway royalty. Cat killers and spiritualists. These were the friends and clients of Howe Hummel, the most famous (and famously rotten) law firm in nineteenth-century America.The partners gloried in their reputation and made a rich living from it. William Howe left London a step ahead of the law to find his destiny defending the perpetrators of murder and mayhem in post-Civil War New York, in an age of really good murders. A dramatic, diamond-encrusted presence, Howe was one of the great courtroom orators of his era, winning improbable acquittals time after time.Abraham Hummel enjoyed a quieter but perhaps more fearsome notoriety, shaking down high society so well and so often that receiving an envelope with the law firm's name on it became almost a rite of passage.The partners bestrode Gilded Age New York with wit and brio, and everyone from Theodore Roosevelt to Lola Montez had a part in their story. In Howe Hummel's prime, it would not have been unusual to see a leading politician, a pickpocket, a Broadway star, a bank robber, and a socialite all crowded together into the waiting room of their offices, located conveniently across the street from the city jail. Howe and Hummel were not particularly good men. They were perfectly ready even eager to lie, cheat, and bribe on behalf of their clients. They did stop short of murder, though, a principle that played a critical role when the famous firm imploded in a truly spectacular web of deceit gone wrong.Through the windows of the dingy premises of Howe Hummel, readers can glimpse the Gilded Age in all its grime and grandeur. Cait Murphy restores this once-famous duo to their rightful place in the pantheon of great American characters.

Time is not money.Time is more important than money. Today's customers are overwhelmed, overworked, and overstressed, and it seems that everyone from CEOs to soccer moms is short on time and inundated with information. As a result, despite the availability of 24/7 commerce and countless ways of engaging people in our multiscreen (mobile, TV, and PC) economy, companies find it more difficult than ever to claim even a fraction of the 1,440 minutes in their customers' precious 24 hours. In The 24-Hour Customer, Adrian C. Ott, CEO of a successful Silicon Valley consultancy, argues that companies need to strategically harness the ebbs and flows of customer time and attention in order to win in today's competitive landscape. She explores the economics of time and attention, including why customers will devote hours addicted to social networks, yet will say "I have no time!" to other offerings. Based on extensive research and real-world results with market-leading companies, this book provides tools, such as Time-Value Tradeoffs and Time-ographics, that pinpoint opportunities to increase revenue and gain market traction. Filled with fascinating case studies from companies like Johnson Johnson, Amazon, and iPhone app start-ups, The 24-Hour Customer offers fresh ideas for capitalizing on the elements of time, attention, and value to innovate never-before-considered products, services, and programs for today's ber-connected, multitasking customer. Readers will discover how: Zipcar utilized time-slicing to redefine automobile ownership and grew by 70 percent, while the auto industry struggled in 2009; Netflix, Hulu, and others time-shifted to movies on-demand, ultimately restructuring the entertainment industry; P&G leveraged inattention by enabling habit-formation for some of its most successful brands. This book shares the latest strategic weapons for achieving market leadership and will change the way executives think about their businesses and their customers.

Award-winning journalist and leading consumer advocate William J. McGee offers a shocking, essential exposé that reveals the real state of the "friendly skies."From outsourced call centers in India to the Alabama location where all lost baggage ends up, William J. McGee crisscrossed the country and traveled around the globe immersing himself deep into the world of commercial airlines. And what he found was shocking.McGee interviewed countless industry insiders pilots, TSA security screeners, FAA inspectors, legislators, the CEOs of the major carriers, and even Ralph Nader and Steven Slater, the disgruntled flight attendant who famously jettisoned a JetBlue flight. Here he reveals how airline executives are cutting costs in "a mad race to the bottom" by delegating flights to second-tier regional airlines and outsourcing critical aircraft maintenance and repairs to unlicensed "mechanics" in China, Singapore, Mexico, and El Salvador. And while the U.S. airlines have raked in tens of billions of dollars for checked baggage alone in recent years, our skies (and our airports) are not getting any safer. What's more, McGee explains how both political parties and all branches of the U.S. government have conspired to place corporate interests above the interests of consumers, workers, the nation's economy, and even the planet itself. Attention All Passengers will change the way you view the airline industry and make you think twice the next time you see the fasten seat belts sign.

Raised in small-town Arkansas, Billy Bob Thornton grew up amid a rich storytelling tradition. See, the South is just different than other places. . . . You can feel the ghosts there. As a kid, he would sit on the porch listening to his family or some old man down the road spinning yarns about colorful neighbors. These stories didn't have to be made up. The characters were already there, so the stories just came out of the characters we knew. Thus was borne his Oscar-winning masterpiece Sling Blade and now The Billy Bob Tapes a narrative based on late-night conversations with Kinky Friedman and other friends who gathered 'round to hear Billy mine a cave full of ghosts. Billy grew up shooting squirrels, playing drums in VFW clubs, and dreaming of rock 'n' roll stardom or pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals. Then at sixteen he took a drama class to meet chicks and met Mrs. Treadway, who noticed the young man's talent and encouraged him as an actor and writer. "You don't know what it's like to be a drama teacher in a small town in Arkansas where nobody really cares," she said, "but let me tell you something. You can do this." Everything I've accomplished since, I can trace back to this woman, Maudie Treadway.The colorful characters, stories, and experiences of his youth would find their way into Billy's work, in his films and music, and in his perspective and attitude. It's like the old saying goes: you can take the boy out of the hills, but you can't take the hills out of the boy. That boy did leave the hills for Hollywood Hills. A true fish out of water, he recalls stories of miserable jobs, the cheapest accommodations, and physical hunger but also a devoted writing partner Tom Epperson, a life-changing acting teacher in L.A., and a compassionate nurse who snuck him milk shakes when he was near starvation. But there was always the dream of being an actor, and his fortunes turned when he served hors d'oeuvres as a catering waiter to legendary director Billy Wilder, who advised him, "Write about your interesting life." Billy's long career in Hollywood yields stories of inspired collaborations and failed ones, true friendships with other actors and musicians, and good friends gone too soon. In The Billy Bob Tapes, he reflects on the critics, the culture around fame, and the challenges of conveying an artistic vision in film. Most striking is Billy's clear-eyed perspective about the magic of entertainment, and how we perceive it in a rapidly changing world. With passion, unvarnished honesty, wry humor, and a little help from friends Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, Dwight Yoakam, Tom Epperson, and Daniel Lanois, Billy Bob finally talks.

Becoming Richard Pryor is a book that breaks new ground. . . . Saul details the amazing way that Richard found his way out of the life for which he seemed destined and into the world of the performing arts. New York Times Richard Pryor may have been the most unlikely star in Hollywood history. Raised in his family's brothels, in Peoria, Illinois, by a grandmother who often threatened to kick him upstairs with her size-twelve shoes, he always considered himself a bottom dog. He took to the stage originally to escape the tough realities of his childhood but later discovered he could alchemize his stand-up by delving fully, even painfully, into the off-color life he'd known. He brought that vitality to a movie career whose best moments Blazing Saddles, Blue Collar, the buddy comedies with Gene Wilder flowed directly out of his spirit of creative improvisation. The major studios considered him dangerous. Audiences felt plugged directly into the socket of life.Built on groundbreaking research, Becoming Richard Pryor brings into sharp focus the man and his genius as never before. From his heartbreaking childhood, his trials in the army, and his improv days in Greenwich Village to his soul-searching interlude in Berkeley and his rise in the New Hollywood of the 1970s, Becoming Richard Pryor sheds light on an entertainer who, by uniting the spirits of the Black Power movement and the counterculture, forever altered the cultural DNA of America. A fascinating, exhilarating read. Michael Chabon

The Second City has launched the careers of celebrated comic performers such as Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert and produced award-winning content. But it's the actual improvisational process developed and honed over the years by The Second City that has become its legacy. Players master an ability to co-create in ensembles, using philosophies that celebrate a "Yes, And" approach. They embrace authenticity and failure, and espouse the idea of "following the follower," which allows any member of the team to assume a leadership role. For more than two decades, The Second City has taken these same principles in thousands of corporate clients, showing leaders how to apply the tools of improv to common business challenges. Here, for the first time, Second City executives Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton describe how you can use the same skills that thrill audiences around the world to improve your emotional intelligence, increase creativity, and learn to pivot out of tight and uncomfortable situations. In this engaging, often humorous, and highly practical book, you will learn how to become a more compelling leader and a more collaborative follower by employing the seven elements of improv: Yes, And, by which you give every idea a chance to be acted on; Ensemble, reconciling the needs of individuals with those of the broader team; Co-creation, which highlights the importance of dialogue in creating new products, processes, and relationships; Authenticity, or being unafraid to speak truth to power, challenge convention, and break the rules; Failure, teaching us that not only is it okay to fail, but we should always include it as part of our process; Follow the Follower, which gives any member of the group the chance to assume a leadership role; Listening, in which you learn to stay in the moment, and know the difference between listening to understand and listening merely to respond. When we are fiercely following the tenets of improvisation, we generate ideas both quickly and efficiently, we weather storms with more aplomb, and we don't work burdened by a fear of failure. Even better, these qualities are fully transferable to our lives outside the office. More people are beginning to recognize what The Second City has known for a long time: In the midst of a revolution in how we learn, communicate, and work, professional success often rests on the same pillars that form the foundation of great comedy: Creativity, Communication, and Collaboration. That's where improvisation comes in.

The world would end in 1492 so the prophets, soothsayers, and stargazers said. They were right. Their world did end. Ours began. In this extraordinary, sweeping history, Felipe Fernendez-Armesto traces key elements of the modern world back to that single, fateful year. Everything changed in 1492: the way power and wealth were distributed around the globe, the way major religions and civilizations divided the world, and the increasing interconnectedness of separate economies that we now call globalization. Events that began in 1492 transformed the whole ecological system of the planet. Our individualism and the very sense we share of inhabiting one world, as partakers in a common humanity, took shape and became visible in 1492.In search of the origins of modernity, 1492 takes readers on a journey around the globe of the time, in the company of real-life travelers, drawing together the threads that came to bind the planet. The tour starts in Granada, where the last Islamic kingdom in Europe collapsed, then moves to Timbuktu, where a new Muslim empire triumphed. With Portuguese explorers, we visit the court of the first Christian king in the southern hemisphere. We join Jews expelled from Spain as they cross the Mediterranean to North Africa, Italy, and Istanbul. We see the flowering of the Renaissance in the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent and go to the corrupt Rome of Alexander Borgia. We see the frozen frontiers of the dynamic, bloody Russia of Ivan the Great and hear mystical poets sing on the shores of the Indian Ocean. We sail the Atlantic with Columbus. In the depths of an old volcanic crater in the Canary Islands, we witness the start of the first European overseas empire. We observe the Aztecs and Incas laying the foundations of a New World in the Americas. Wars and witchcraft, plagues and persecutions, poetry and prophecy, science and magic, art and faith all the glories and follies of the time are in this book. Everywhere, new departures marked the start of a new configuration for humankind, revealing how and why the modern world is different from the worlds of antiquity and the Middle Ages.History seems a patternless labyrinth but a good guide can trace our paths through it back to the moment when some of the most striking features of today's world began.

Street fighting. Brazilian jujitsu. Grappling. Welcome to BJ Penn's island. Don't worry, he won't hurt you (much). For the last decade, BJ Penn has been one of the most successful and feared fighters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), rising through the ranks to become, pound for pound, one of the best in the world. Along the way, people have been quick to judge, praise, criticize, and hype him. They have torn him down only to build him back up. They have spilled ink and blood trying to understand what makes him the provocative and controversial fighter that he is.Why I Fight is the answer that everyone critics, fans, commentators, pundits, and perhaps even Dana White, current president of the UFC has been waiting for. In his own words, Penn tells the story of his life spent fighting, explaining what led a scrappy teenager from the rough streets of Hilo, Hawaii, onto the biggest stage in all of mixed martial arts (MMA). From his earliest days, becoming one of the preeminent practitioners of Brazilian jujitsu in the world, to his first MMA fights and his battles with UFC champions like Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre, Penn shows that in life, just like in the Octagon, he is never one to back down from a fight.A blunt and brutal look at his hardest-fought victories and his most frustrating defeats, Why I Fight is the story of how BJ Penn became one of only two fighters in UFC history to hold belts in two different weight classes. It is the story of a kid from Hawaii who loved to fight. It is the story of a true prodigy.